European Parliament elections in Greece elect the members of the European Parliament representing Greece.
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Representation of Greece in the European Parliament
Greece has had a delegation of Members of the European Parliament in the European Parliament since Greek accession to the EU in 1984. Originally, the Greek delegation numbered 25, but after 2004 that was reduced to 24 (due to the increase of the EU member countries). In 2009, it was further reduced to 22, and in 2014 to 21 MEPs.
Electoral system
In the European elections, the whole country forms a single constituency and an electoral threshold is set at 3% of the vote. Members of the government and elected members of the Hellenic Parliament may only stand for election after having resigned from office.
Until 2014, the MEPs were elected every five years on the basis of a party-list proportional representation system. Just a few weeks ahead of the 2014 European Parliament election, the Greek parliament changed the regulations for European Parliament elections (Law 4255/2014). Doing away with closed lists, candidates are now elected on the basis of individual preference votes with a maximum of four preferences per voter. The number of candidates per electoral list was doubled from 21 to 42 and the maximum campaign expenses per candidate were raised to 135,000 Euro.
Latest election
Presently, there are seven Greek parties represented in the European Parliament: Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza), New Democracy, Golden Dawn, Elia (PASOK), To Potami, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Independent Greeks (ANEL).