Senate experts: new electoral code could violate European political legislation

The Senate at this week's meeting will deal with, among other things, amendments to the electoral code of elections to the European Parliament. It is a question of changing the election rules of the Polish representatives to the EP before the elections scheduled for May 2019. The main change is the replacement of the constituency of more than 50 mandates by 13 districts in which at least three deputies will be elected.

Detractors of the amendment have already warned that the electoral code created in this way would lead to this election. That only the largest parties will be able to present parliamentarians to the EP. The Legislative Office of the Senate confirms these allegations in its notice to the Act.

The authors of the opinion of the office describe that the European law prohibits the use of an electoral threshold greater than 5%. It is also the electoral threshold for elections to the Sejm and the Senate. This means the party, which has totaled less than 5 percent. the votes do not participate in the distribution of seats. However, apart from the proposed election threshold, there is also an effective electoral threshold which is the effect of the size of the electoral districts. This means that parties below this threshold – even if they participate in the distribution of seats – do not have the opportunity to get them in practice. The office calculated that according to the current code, the effective threshold in Poland is 1.5%. Meanwhile, after the entry into force of the amendment of PiS the effective threshold will increase to 16.5%.

"The effective electoral threshold exceeds the triple maximum of the EU"

which means that it will be the second highest in the EU (after Ireland), and that the amendment in this regard " may be considered a violation of European law " – results from the opinion of the Legislative Office. In practice, this means that, according to current surveys, only PiS and PO will probably present their representatives to the European Parliament.

The proposed division into electoral constituencies, proposed in the law, will make Poland the only country in the Union where the effective electoral threshold will exceed the maximum of 5% of the EU more than three times. In Poland, the effective electoral threshold will be 16.5%. So many voices in the country will have to receive an electoral committee to get a seat.

– we read in the opinion of the office. He adds that "only Ireland has a higher effective electoral threshold, but in its case, it results from the application of a single transitive voice system allowed by the law of the United States." EU. "

The Office of Legislation explains that more than 5%, however, is justified, for example, by a small number of seats (eg in Denmark). "The only country that has not yet met the maximum eligible electoral threshold of 5% was France, but it has already reformed its electoral system," reads the document.

The office also calculated the number of electoral thresholds in each district. The lowest effective threshold will be 11.3%. (in 10, Małopolska, Świętokrzyskie and 11 – Silesian), and the highest – up to 20.8%. The latter will be valid in more than half of the districts.