Talk:Elections to the European Parliament/Archive 2

Constituencies

Articles have now been created for all constituencies of the European Parliament between 1979 and 2009. The list is here:

{{European Parliament constituencies 1979-1984}} {{European Parliament constituencies 1984-1989}} {{European Parliament constituencies 1989-1994}} {{European Parliament constituencies 1994-1999}} {{European Parliament constituencies 1999-2004}} {{European Parliament constituencies 2004-2009}}

Finland law changed in 1998 (I think) and since 1999 Finland has been a single national constituency (despite what the factsheets say). However, I cannot confirm/deny whether it was one or four constituencies between 1996 and 1999: Statistics Finland doesn't have that much detail for 96, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It is questionable whether Greenland was a constituency: the sources say that Denmark was a single electoral area, but the same sources say that "...Denmark elects 15 of its 16 members to the European Parliament on June 7 1979, and the voters in Greenland go to the polls two days later to fill the one Danish seat set aside for them..." [1] and in the 84 elections a MEP (Finn Lynge) was elected for Greenland [2] even tho Greenland was due to leave the EC in 1985. This would differentiate it from, say, Gibraltar, which does not have a specific MEP assigned to it. Given this, a separate article has been created for the Greenland constituency.

The way Poland constituencies are set up is unique in the EU: the number of seats for each constituency isn't decided until after the election and depends on the number of votes cast in that constituency - the more votes a constituency casts, the more seats that constituency gets. I really like this system: instead of adjusting their boundaries to match changes in population, the system is self-correcting.

The Belgium German-speaking electoral college had its first election in 1994: the other two have been in existence since 1979.

If anybody wants to go through the articles and start filling out constituency results, please, please be my guest.

The number of constituencies are:

• United Kingdom: 146 (134 (79-99) and 11 (99-09) and 1 (79-09))
• Poland: 13
• France: 9 (1 (79-04) and 8 (04-09))
• Ireland: 7 (3 (79-04) and 3 (04-09) and 1 (79-09))
• Belgium: 3
• Italy: 5
• Denmark: 2 including Greenland
• The rest: 1 each

Regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 23:54, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Good lord your at it again, thanks for all the work. Gets so complicated for me drives me mad. When I have some time soon I'll help out - my internet is a bit on-off right now. - J Logan ^t: 00:10, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I had noticed that your usual contribution rate (about 1 a minute) had dropped off slightly <grin> - anything wrong? When you're back on your internet feet, it would really help if you could track down the constituency results, although that might be so difficult it's not worth doing (the total number of past and present constituencies is approx 195, so it'll take weeks if not months. Drop me a line if you need a hand with the Polish results: the Polish commission releases the constituency results in - unsurprisingly - Polish). The next stop for me is the groups: each group gets an article, navbox, infobox, and its colors installed as metadata. Once that's done, I'll get back to the Election pages. Fun, fun, fun....Anameofmyveryown (talk) 01:13, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

195 European Parliament constituency templates

After much hard work, infobox templates have been created for each of the approx 195 European Parliament constituencies since 1979. These templates contain sources, creation/dissolution dates, and numbers of MEPs for each constituency. User:Green Giant has questioned their existence as single-use templates. While I disagree (the whole reason for spinning them off into templates was to allow them to be used multiple times), I will be away from my terminal until late Friday/Early saturday and so will not be able to save them should they be nominated for speedy deletion. Given the work they represent, it would be difficult to resurrect the data should it be deleted. Given that, may I ask the users of these pages to maintain a watching brief on the templates in my absence and take copies should they be deleted in my absence? They can be found here. Kind regards, Anameofmyveryown (talk) 01:03, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

West Berlin

appointed 3 mep

nationally elected officials

No other body is directly elected although the Council of the European Union and European Council is composed of nationally elected officials.

This is not true. The Council of the European Union is composed of national ministers. Ministers are not necessarily elected. One good example was Dominique de Villepin, former French foreign minister and prime minister. He has never stood for election. The European Council is composed of heads of state or government. A head of government needn't necessarily be nationally elected.

If nobody opposes, I shall delete this sentence as it is inaccurate.--Scotchorama (talk) 10:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

JLogan amended it; works for me. Thanks.--Scotchorama (talk) 13:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Historical percentage results in union-wide elections of the three major groups by region.[12]

There is no regions mentioned on that website so how can you arbitrarily add Balkans which are also East Europe. I presume location grouping is something that countries can identify themselves as (just like the name of their national language within EU). For this reason I presume Croatia does not have the public nor government support to let it be included under Balkan region, as the official government is being the liason between Europe and the Balkans not being Balkans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.82.238.198 (talk) 08:34, 30 January 2008 (UTC)