European Parliament Election: May 23-26, 2019

[Tender Branson]

MEPs' gender balance by country 2019 - Constitutive session:

Finland is the only country hat has a majority-female EU parliament delegation.

Several countries such as Austria have a 50-50 composition. In fact, Austria would have joined Finland with a majority-female delegation, but Petra Steger decided in the last minute to run again for parliament in September and the FPÖ replaced her with a guy next on the list.

Cyprus has a 100% male delegation.



The EU share of female MEPs is now up to 40% in total (higher than the 25% share in the US Senate or 23% in the US House):



https://election-results.eu/mep-gender-balance/2019-2024

[Tender Branson]

But open lists should give fairly equal representation, as long as the parties run a fairly equal share of candidates.

Which they often don't do:

Until Kurz rode in and promised gender equality in the ÖVP (which still has not happened after the 2017 federal election, but in the 2019 EU election => the ÖVP-delegation is now majority female), the ÖVP and other parties would simply rank a lot of males to the first 10 or so electable spots, despite a lot of qualified women wanting to run. Mostly it had to do with incumbent men not willing to give up their seats in parliament which they occupied for the past 20 years or so ...

It seems this is changing now with the Me too ! movement and another good step in the right direction was the new campaign finance law that was passed in parliament yesterday, which will already apply in the September election, and which will grant a public financing bonus to parties with a female share of MPs of 40%+ in their future parliament groups ...

(I still think that the FPÖ won't care about this bonus and will still not present a 50/50 list for the upcoming election ... )

[Tender Branson]

But open lists should give fairly equal representation, as long as the parties run a fairly equal share of candidates.

Which they often don't do:

Until Kurz rode in and promised gender equality in the ÖVP (which still has not happened after the 2017 federal election, but in the 2019 EU election => the ÖVP-delegation is now majority female), the ÖVP and other parties would simply rank a lot of males to the first 10 or so electable spots, despite a lot of qualified women wanting to run. Mostly it had to do with incumbent men not willing to give up their seats in parliament which they occupied for the past 20 years or so ...

I think the Austrian example is not open lists, but closed lists (which can be broken by a large personal vote)? Otherwise it doesn't really make sense to talk about electable spots, as all spots are in principle equally electable on an open list. So yes, in closed list systems like this, the party leadership decides the most, while in open lists there is a big "responsibility" at the voters if the lists are fairly equal, and normally they would vote in a fairly equal share of women.

Theoretically, we have an open-list system - but practically, the preference vote system to move candidates up the list was never really promoted to the public and therefore the voters don't really use it. Result: Only the frontrunners and maybe 1 or 2 others get enough preference votes, because only they have the necessary name ID to achieve it. Some unknown candidate will never really achieve to be promoted upwards the list - unless that candidate runs a smart social media campaign or something.

Aware of that situation, the Greens and NEOS use party list primaries - so that their lists are more balanced.

[Tender Branson]

Tusk is asking the countries to name a few Green commissioners ...

Not here ...

Commissioner Hahn (ÖVP) will be extended for another term (ÖVP+FPÖ+NOW will vote for him):

https://kurier.at/politik/inland/bierlein-schlaegt-hahn-als-eu-kommissar-vor/400548935

The SPÖ was opposed to another term and wanted a woman instead.