ABSTRACT
While an increasing number of provisions of European Union (EU) law touch upon European Parliament (EP) elections, they constitute a patchwork that calls for careful reconstruction. This chapter discusses the legal framework for EP elections at the level of EU primary law, how it has gradually evolved since the 1970s, and how it is currently structured under the EU Treaties, as modified by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. More concretely, it looks into the principles and norms laid down in this respect in the EU’s founding Treaties and in the 1976 ‘Act concerning the elections of the members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage’, which enjoys constitutional status in the EU legal order. The aim is to obtain a better understanding of the long and winding road towards a common electoral law for the EU. This process is far from finished, as most aspects of EP elections are currently still regulated by divergent national laws of the EU Member States, cynically contributing to these elections retaining ‘second-order’ characteristics.
