by-form
List of European Union member states by political system
Membership criteria require that the candidate country must have achieved:
- stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities;
- the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union;
- the ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.
Consequently, all European Union member states are directly elected democracies that are considered to be "free" according to the criteria of Freedom House (with all of them being rated 1/1 except for Latvia with 2/1, Bulgaria and Greece with 1/2 and Romania with 2/2). As of 2008, all European Union member states are representative democracies; however, they do not all have the same political system, with most of the differences arising from different historical backgrounds.
Many of the European Union's neighbour states are not considered to be "free" by the same criteria. Most European states neighbouring the European Union are considered to be "free" or "partly free" — and improving — by Freedom House, with the notable exceptions of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Russia. On the other hand, almost all of the states in North Africa and Southwest Asia that neighbour the European Union are not considered to be "free", with the notable exception of Israel.
Monarchism and republicanism
At present, seven monarchies are members of the European Union: Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. All seven monarchies in the European Union are constitutional monarchies, which means that the monarch does not influence the politics of the monarch's country. Either the monarch is legally prohibited from doing so, or the monarch does not utilise the political powers vested in the office by convention. At the dawn of the 20th century, France was the only republic among the future members states of the European Union; the ascent of republicanism to the political mainstream only started at the beginning of the 20th century. Public opinion is currently strongly in favour of keeping the monarchy in the remaining seven monarchies in the European Union, and there is currently no ongoing campaign with popular support to abolish monarchy in any of them.
Form of government
There are three types of government systems in European politics: in a presidential system, the president is the head of state and the head of government; in a semi-presidential system, the president and the prime minister share a number of competences; finally, in a parliamentary system, the president is a ceremonial figurehead who has few political competences. As with the definition of constitutional monarchies, sometimes the president does have non-ceremonial competences, but does not use them by constitutional convention; this is the case in Austria, for instance.
By definition, modern democratic constitutional monarchies are parliamentary, as there is no elected head of state who could assume non-ceremonial competences; of the twenty republican member states of the European Union, only one is a presidential republic (Cyprus) and one is a semi-presidential republic (France).
Degree of self-governance
Most of the European Union's member states are unitary states, which means that most of the competences lie with the central government and only minor or local issues are within the authority of regional governments. However, three states are federations (Austria, Belgium and Germany) of states or regions with equal competences, and six other states have either devolved certain powers to special regions or are federacies (or both):
- federacies:
- in Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland are autonomous (and neither is part of the European Union);
- in Finland, Åland has substantial autonomy;
- in France, the collectivité sui generis New Caledonia (which is not part of the European Union) has a large degree of autonomy;
- in the Netherlands, the Caribbean island groups of Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles are equal partners to the Netherlands within the Kingdom of the Netherlands;
- in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands — Guernsey and Jersey — and the Isle of Man are a special case, being neither part of the United Kingdom nor of the European Union; these islands are British Crown dependencies;
- devolved states:
- in Italy, the government has devolved a number of powers to the twenty regions, of which five have a very large degree of autonomy;
- in Spain, the central government has devolved various powers to the historic nationalities among the autonomous communities, namely Andalusia, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia;
- in the United Kingdom, various competences have been devolved to the Home Nations of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The Greater London Authority also has extensive devolved powers.
Parliamentary chambers
A further distinction is the number of chambers in the national legislature. While there had been legislatures with more than two chambers (tricameral and tetracameral ones), nowadays there are only unicameral and bicameral ones. There is no clear trend towards either model as of 2006, and there's also no real common factor which determines whether a country's legislature is unicameral or bicameral, except for the fact that federations and countries with strong regional differences or regional identities are normally bicameral to reflect the regions' interests in national bills. The states with the larger populations, from the Netherlands upwards, all have a bicameral system. Although there is a greater mix among the smaller states (some influenced by their federalist structure), the smallest states are on the whole unicameral.
In the member states of the European Union, if the parliament has only one chamber, it is wholly directly elected in all cases. If there are two chambers, the lower house is directly elected in all cases, while the upper house can be directly elected (e.g. the Senate of Poland); or indirectly elected, for example, by regional legislatures (e.g. the Federal Council of Austria); or non-elected, but representing certain interest groups (e.g. the National Council of Slovenia); or non-elected (though by and large appointed by elected officials) as a remnant of a non-democratic political system in earlier times (as in the House of Lords in the United Kingdom).
Listed by form of government
Listed by type of parliament
- I: Due to Belgium's complex federal structure the Brussels Regional Parliament (Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Parlement / Parlement de la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale / Brüsseler Regionalparlament) (89, regional assembly), Flemish Parliament (Vlaams Parlement) (124, regional and community assembly), the Walloon Parliament (Parlement wallon) (75, regional assembly), the Parliament of the French Community (Parlement de la Communauté française) (94, community assembly) and the Parliament of the German-speaking Community (Parlament der Deutschsprachigen Gemeinschaft) (25, community assembly) have competences in federal legislation that affects their interests.
- II: In addition to the 71 elected senators, the ruling monarch's children (or, in case there are none, her or his siblings) are also entitled to sit in the Senate after reaching the age of 18 and entitled to vote after reaching the age of 21 as senators by law (senator van rechtswege / sénateur de droit / Senator von Rechts wegen), although they do not use the right to vote by constitutional convention. There are currently three such senators.
- III: The number of Senators will gradually increase to 343 with the 2008 Senate election and 348 with the 2011 Senate election to reflect changes in French demography.
- IV: In legislation which affects the autonomous province of the Åland Islands, its Parliament (Lagting) (30) also has legislative competences.
- V: While there is a Federal Assembly (Bundesversammlung) similar to the Austrian Federal Assembly, it is not simply a joint session of the Federal Diet and the Federal Council and as such not the overall name of the legislature.
- VI: Technically, the Federal Diet only has 598 members; the additional sixteen seats are overhang seats resulting from the 2005 election.
- VII: In addition to the 315 elected members, there are currently seven senators for life (senatore a vita); these include three former Italian Presidents, who are ex officio senators for life, as well as four senators appointed by the President "for outstanding patriotic merits in the social, scientific, artistic or literary field". There can only be five appointed senators in addition to the ex officio ones at any one time.
- VIII: Technically, the Federal Diet only has 65 members; the additional four seats are overhang seats to ensure a majority of MPs for the party which gained the most votes in the 2008 election.
- IX: The name Zgromadzenie Narodowe is only used on the rare occasions when both houses sit together.
- X: In legislation which affects the overseas territory of Gibraltar, its Parliament (17) also has legislative competences.
References
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday October 02, 2008 at 09:33:53 PDT (GMT -0700)
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