Some people are systematically excluded from any political representation. An unjust situation that needs to be changed.

By Lorena López de Lacalle, EFA President and Manuela Ripa, MEP

All European citizens are equal. That is the basic principle of European democracy. But when it comes to their political representation, some citizens get a bigger share than others. Some people systematically do not get seats in parliaments, which means that their voices are never taken into account in political decisions that directly affect them.

The blocking clauses are a big part of this problem, as millions of people in the EU do not have a say in its institutions. As a result, parliaments do not reflect the diversity of European society. This is an unfair situation that could be remedied by abolishing or lowering the (percentage ) hurdles at European, national and regional level. At the very least, it is crucial that no new hurdles are introduced that could further distort politics.

A threshold is the minimum percentage of votes that candidates or a political party must achieve in order to be represented in parliament. If the electoral law does not provide for an official threshold, the number of representatives is limited only by the total number of seats available in parliament. Nevertheless, in most electoral systems, official (percentage) thresholds are set to exclude minoritarian options and prevent them from being represented, even if they would win a seat in a normal distribution. These seats are then taken by the larger parties. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommends that the (percentage) thresholds should not be higher than 3%. In practice, most European countries have significantly higher hurdles.

This is not just a theoretical complaint. Blocking clauses have serious consequences for our democracy, as a high percentage of voters are not represented. The results of some recent elections in EU member states should worry anyone who believes in representative democracy. In the 2020 parliamentary elections in Slovakia, more than a quarter of the electorate was unrepresented (28.39%). In Slovenia, too, 24% of the total vote was lost after the last election in 2022 due to the electoral threshold. The same applies to large member states with supposedly stable party systems: Almost 20% of the votes cast in the 2019 European elections in France went to parties that did not reach the 5% threshold, meaning that a fifth of the electorate did not win a seat.

These figures may seem outrageous. But instead of removing this threshold for representation, the major parties are proposing to create new ones. In Germany, a 2% threshold has been proposed for the European elections. If such a (percentage) hurdle had been introduced in the last elections in 2019, this would have resulted in a full 1.7 million votes resulting in 0 seats. That is more than the entire population of Estonia.

Losing the votes of these voters not only means that they are denied the right to democracy. It also restricts the political ideas represented. It makes debates more undemocratic. The only ones who benefit from this are the big parties, who can reduce politics to a game of two or three power groups. This naturally leads to the kind of confrontational, highly polarized politics that has become common in majority systems like the UK or the US. This is not what Europe should look like.

The European Union is based on the principle of democracy and must respect each of its citizens equally. Moreover, the EU is a community project: it is actually "united in diversity". It is therefore imperative that European politicians are able to work together and listen to all the voices that make up our diverse societies. This is only possible with fair electoral systems.

Deliberate exclusion of minorities

The electoral hurdles can disenfranchise citizens who cast their votes for a smaller party. However, there are some groups that are particularly affected. Minorities, who by their nature make up a smaller part of their country's society, are often systematically excluded from participating in the political debate. The use of (percentage) hurdles to keep them out of the legislature is a common tactic across Europe. In Greece, for example, the party representing the Turkish minority (1.2% of the population) is blocked by a nationwide 3% threshold, despite coming first in two constituencies.

Romania provides us with another curious example. There is a 5% hurdle for parties. This already high (percentage) hurdle rises to 10% for any coalition with several parties. This system forces minorities to choose between two options.

On the one hand, they can rely on the legislature guaranteeing them a single seat, which forces them to comply with the government's demands. On the other hand, they can contest elections as normal - but only as one party, which forces the entire community to abandon electoral plurality and support a single electoral list.

In practice, Hungarians, who make up 6% of the Romanian population with more than one million people, only have one party to vote for. If other parties were to run, this would lead to a split in the electorate and the entire community would lose out. This in turn means that the majority government can keep the minority under control.

The democracy we want

A democracy without borders is not an unrealistic expectation. In the Netherlands, the proportion of unrepresented voters is remarkably low: only 1.99% of voters in the 2021 election. This is only possible because there is no formal threshold in the Dutch electoral system. As the number of mandates is only limited by the number of seats available, the effective (percentage) threshold is only 0.67%. This leads to a healthy selection of parties working together and forming coalitions of different voices - the famous polder model, which is based on consensus rather than confrontation and in which the diversity of voices is included in political decision-making.

The European Free Alliance, the European party for self-determination, democracy and equality, supports this model and advocates its adoption. Many parties working together leads to better, more effective representation of interests - and, we believe, to better decision-making and a stronger democracy. Plurality not only helps to create a diverse government, but also helps to raise issues that would otherwise not be raised. We believe in a Europe that includes all the views and voices of its peoples. A Europe in which no one is excluded.

All voters are equal. Let us also recognize the votes as equal!