2019 European Parliament election in the context of "Volt Europa"

The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union (EU) and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 720 members (MEPs), after the June 2024 European elections, from a previous 705 MEPs. It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world (after the Parliament of India), with an electorate of around 375 million eligible voters in 2024.

Since 1979, the Parliament has been directly elected every five years by the citizens of the European Union through universal suffrage. Voter turnout in parliamentary elections decreased each time after 1979 until 2019, when voter turnout increased by eight percentage points, and rose above 50% for the first time since 1994. The voting age is 18 in all EU member states except for Malta, Belgium, Austria and Germany, where it is 16, and Greece, where it is 17.

The eighth European Parliament was elected in the 2014 elections and lasted until the 2019 elections.

The 2019 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2019 European Parliament election. It was held on Thursday 23 May 2019 and the results announced on Sunday 26 and Monday 27 May 2019, after all the other EU countries had voted. This was the United Kingdom's final participation in a European Parliament election before leaving the European Union on 31 January 2020; it was also the last election to be held under the provisions of the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002 before its repeal under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and was the first European election in the United Kingdom since 1999 to be held on a day that did not coincide with any local elections. This was the first of two national elections held in the United Kingdom in 2019; the 2019 general election occurred six-and-a-half months later in December 2019.

At first no European Parliament election was planned in the United Kingdom, for Brexit (following the 2016 referendum) was set to take place on 29 March 2019. However, at the European summit on 11 April 2019, the British government and the European Council agreed to delay British withdrawal until 31 October 2019. From that time onward it was the default position in UK and EU law for the election to take place; however, the UK Government continued making attempts to avoid participation by seeking agreement on a withdrawal to take place before 23 May. On 7 May 2019, the UK government conceded, despite its opposition, that the election would have to go ahead.

The question of whether the governance of the European Union (EU) lacks democratic legitimacy has been debated since the time of the European Economic Community in the late 1970s. This led in part to an elected European Parliament being created in 1979 and given the power to approve or reject EU legislation. Since then, usage of the term has broadened to describe newer issues facing the European Union. Voter turnout at the elections to the European Parliament fell consecutively at every election from the first in 1979 up to 2014 when it hit a low of 42.54%, before finally rising in 2019. The 2014 turnout figure is lower than that of any national election in the 27 countries of the European Union, where turnout at national elections averages 68% across the EU.

Opinions differ as to whether the EU has a democratic deficit or how it should be remedied if it exists. Some scholars argue that the EU does not suffer from a democratic deficit as it is more constrained by its plural structure of checks and balances than any national polity. Moravcsik (2002) argues that the EU has legitimacy through its member states, as their democratically elected governments take part in EU decision-making through the Council of the European Union . He argues that the EU is an intergovernmental institutional framework where democratically elected national governments bargain with each other, and is contained by a structure of checks and balances rather than any polity. In his later work, Moravscik (2008) described the "myth" of Europes democratic deficit, believing that the EU functions as an interstate organisation, which is held accountable member state governments rather than citizens. This makes direct democratic accountability to EU-level electorates less important

Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF; French: Europe des nations et des libertés, ENL) was a far-right political group that operated in the European Parliament between 2015 and 2019. It was composed of 37 MEPs and only existed during the European Parliament's 8th term. Most of its MPs were members of the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom political party.

Ideologically, ENF was right-wing populist and Eurosceptic. Its members included far-right parties such as French National Front (known as National Rally after 2018), Italian Lega Nord, Dutch Party for Freedom, and Vlaams Belang. After the 2019 European Parliament election, ENF was transformed into the Identity and Democracy group.

European Parliament elections were held in France on 26 May 2019 (and on 25 May in parts of overseas France and for some nationals abroad), electing members of the 9th French delegation to the European Parliament as part of the elections held across the European Union. The election featured two major changes since the 2014 election: the return to a single national constituency and the increase in the number of French seats from 74 to 79 upon the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Officially, 79 MEPs were considered to have been elected, including five "virtual" MEPs who did not take their seats until the UK formally left the EU. The election featured 34 separate electoral lists, a record number at the national level.

It was the first national election in France since the election of Emmanuel Macron as president and therefore his first major electoral test, taking place amid dismal approval ratings. For his party, Nathalie Loiseau led the Renaissance list of La République En Marche!, Democratic Movement (MoDem), Agir, and the Radical Movement which ultimately arrived in second with 22.42% of the vote, behind the National Rally (RN) list led by the 23-year-old Jordan Bardella which received 23.34% of the vote, with a lower vote percentage but more overall votes than its 2014 result.