Malta goes to the polls today to elect the six politicians who will be representing the country in the European Parliament as well as the teams who will be running the 68 local councils for the next five years.
A total of 370,184 people are eligible to vote, down by almost 1,500 from the last round of these elections in 2019, according to the Electoral Register.
The number of registered voters for the council elections is 457,343, an increase of 23,000 from five years ago.
According to unofficial figures, around 10 per cent of MEP electoral documents remained uncollected, roughly the same as the 2019 elections.
Polling stations open at 7am and close at 10pm. The results of the MEP elections are expected late tomorrow morning. The election comes at the tail end of a campaign dominated mainly by the hospitals’ inquiry.
All EU states are voting between June 6 and 9 (Thursday and today) with the Netherlands kicking off the process when it voted on Thursday.
The number of members elected in each country depends on the size of the population. It ranges from six for Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus to 96 for Germany.
720 lawmakers to be elected by EU states
In 2019, EU states elected 751 lawmakers. Following the UK’s departure from the EU in 2020, the number of MEPs fell to 705. After this weekend’s election, the European Parliament will have 15 additional members, bringing the total to 720. Twelve countries will get extra MEPs.
Elections are contested by national political parties but, once they are elected, most of the lawmakers then join transnational political groups – the PN will form part of the European People’s Party (EPP) while the Labour Party will join the Socialists and Democrats (S&D).
Thirty-nine candidates threw their names in the hat for the much-coveted seats in the EP – the longest list of candidates for the European Parliament.
The Labour Party is fielding nine candidates while eight will run on the Nationalist Party ticket. The ballot paper also includes a record 13 independent candidates as well as candidates for several small parties.
Among them are three serving MEPs – Roberta Metsola and David Casa (both PN) and Alex Agius Saliba (PL) and former MEP Claudette Abela Baldacchino (PL) who is hoping to return to Brussels. Casa is Malta’s longest-serving MEP, having been elected uninterruptedly since the first MEP elections in Malta, almost 20 years ago.
In the 2019 European election, PL won by a landslide of 42,600 votes over the PN, electing four MEPs to the PN’s two.
Vote-counting of the local council elections will take place over three days between Wednesday and Friday.