Voters throughout the European Union turned out early this month to cast ballots for the European Parliament. These elections take place every five years, giving citizens in each of the EU’s 27 member countries the opportunity to choose a representative.
What does the European Parliament do? Here is the quick explanation laid out in the Europarl.europa.eu website:
The Parliament acts as a co-legislator, sharing with the Council the power to adopt and amend legislative proposals and to decide on the EU budget. It also supervises the work of the Commission and other EU bodies and cooperates with national parliaments of EU countries to get their input.
Portugal’s turnout among the lowest
Countries throughout the EU cast ballots on different days. Portugal’s election day was Sunday, June 9. Turnout was 36. 4 percent, putting Portugal on the lower end of the spectrum. Belgium had the highest turnout with 89.82 percent of voters participating. Croatia, with 21.35 percent, was the lowest, according to provisional results reported on June 14.
Far-right parties came first in five of the countries. Germany’s Alternative for Deutchland (AfD) and France’s National Rally (RN) were big winners in those two countries. The results alarmed French president Emmanuel Macron who has called for a national election three years ahead of schedule. There have been large street demonstrations in Paris against the far right party in the recent days.
A different outcome from March
Portugal bucked the trend seen elsewhere in Europe. The country’s center-left Partito Socialista (PS) was the big winner with 32 percent of the votes. This gave them eight of Portugal’s 21 seats in the EU Parliament. Chega, the far-right party, won 9.8 percent of votes cast and has just two seats.
This is a huge change from March when Chega had a strong showing in Portugal’s national election. At that time, the party received 18 percent of the votes, up from 7.2 percent in 2022 and around 2 percent in 2019, the year the party was founded.
Follow my blog to learn more about daily life in Portugal. Check out my website: RosalieRayburn.com for news about my Digger Doyle Mystery series.
Rosalie in the Red and Green 
This is encouraging news, Rosalie! We thought of you today when we attended Sarah Kotchian’s book signing and reading at Treasure House, which now has nice stacks of your books on prominent display.
LikeLike