European Parliament election, 2009 (Latvia)

The European elections in Latvia in 2009 was held on June 6, 2009. It was conducted as part of the EU-wide European elections held in 2009, with eight of the 736 seats were awarded in the European Parliament in Latvia. If the Treaty of Lisbon during the 2009-14 legislative session take effect, another Latvian deputy will move up in the Parliament.

Election procedures and campaigning parties

The election was by proportional representation with preferential votes according to the D' Hondt method, with the whole country formed a single constituency. It was a blocking threshold of 5 percent. The right to vote had citizens from 18, the passive right to vote from the age of 21.

Participated in the election 17 lists part with a total of 185 candidates. Five of them had already won at the 2004 European election seats. These were the right-wing conservative TB / LNNK (4 seats), the liberal-conservative JL (2 seats), the conservative TP, the Russian minority party PCTVL and the liberal LC (per 1 seat ), the latter took in an electoral alliance with the Christian Democratic LPP 2009.

Results

The turnout was 53.7 %, which is above the European average ( 43.1 %) and also above the Latvian result at the 2004 European elections ( 41.3 %).

Compared to 2004, the results changed greatly. Election winner was founded in 2008 conservative Pilsoniskā Savieniba ( PS), the second largest party was founded in 2005, socialist Saskaņas Centrs (SC). TB / LNNK, JL and TP lost much; the LPP -LC reached almost the level that LC had reached in 2004 alone, with the only mandate of the electoral alliance went to a members of the LPP. Only the result of the PCTVL hardly changed. The newly founded Eurosceptic party Libertas failed with 4.3% at the five-percent hurdle.

Specifically, the parties achieved the following results:

Assignment to groups in the European Parliament

Since the two strongest parties, PS and SC, no European party belonged to and were not previously represented in the parliament, their assignment to the groups in the European Parliament was initially uncertain. While the PS finally joined the Group of the European People's Party ( Christian Democrats), the two SC deputies split up, One of them was a member of the left GUE / NGL Group, and the other joined the Social Democratic S & D. The TB / LNNK was until 2009 a member of the national-conservative faction UEN was that broke up after the election. Instead, the TB / LNNK MPs of the new conservative faction ECR joined. The deputies of the LPP, which does not belong to European party, the liberal ALDE group joined to the well of Parliamentarians of the LC had heard that was received with the list alliance with the LPP.