Finland Times

 

Finnish election for the European Parliament (EP) will be held on Sunday, May 25. With the voting date around the corner, the candidates are still striving for the limited seats in the EP. The possible results, however, are gradually rising to the surface without much suspense.

Finns are usually not enthusiastic about the EP election. However, the election in 2014 is an exception with more higher-ranking politicians on the candidate list than ever.

The European election this year is the first one since the Lisbon Treaty were signed by the EU member states in December 2007, which reinforced the powers of the EP.

In addition to using the election as a platform to seek for their political career in the EU, many Finnish candidates also take the advantage of the platform to attract more supporters for the upcoming Finnish parliamentary election to be held in 2015, according to an analysis by the Finnish Daily Helsingin Sanomat.

This year's European election is being at a critical juncture in Finland. Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen will resign from his post a few weeks after the election, the Finnish government has just launched its austerity budget unveiled in March, the Social Democratic Party's chair was replaced in May and the portfolio of the finance minister is expected to change hands. Many uncertainties are ahead for Finns in this summer.

Finns have experienced four EP elections since the nordic country joined the EU in 1994. On the coming Sunday, they will again vote their favorite candidates for forming the delegation from Finland to the EP.

A total of 252 candidates from 14 Finnish political parties will participate in the election this year for only 13 out of 751 seats of the new EP.

According to five polls carried out by major Finnish market and information research companies Taloustutkimus and Tietoykkonen from November 2013 to May 2014, the conservative National Coalition, the current ruling party of Finland with 44 seats in the Finnish Parliament, stays top steadily with supporting rate varying between 21.1 and 23.8 percent, and thus are supposed to have been able to secure its 4 seats in the Parliament, one more than last election in 2009.

The latest survey of Taloustutkimus published on Thursday showed that the supporting rate for the National Coalition Party is 22.7 percent, followed by the Centre Party and the nationalist Finns Party with 17.6 percent and 17.1 percent of the votes in favor of them respectively.

The National Coalition is strongly pro-European and is a member of the European People's Party. It won in all the previous European elections with 4 seats from 1996 to 2004 and 3 seats from 2009 to 2014 in the EP.

The European People's Party, a centre-right political group, has been the biggest in the EP since 1999. In the last election in 2009, the group won 274 of 766 seats in the parliament.

The center-right European People's Party is also most likely to win European elections with 217 seats, the greatest number in the parliament, according a survey published on Tuesday by Pollwatch, an independent European poll agent.

In striking contrast, the Social Democrats are considered as losers. The party is doing extremely poorly in the polls, and the supporting rate slid substantially from 17.5 in January to 13.8 in May.

There will be a fierce competition for the second-largest party post between the Centre Party and the Finns Party. The two parties are likely to gain 2 or 3 seats each, according to the latest poll conducted by Taloustutkimus.

The Social Democratic Party is expected to have 2 seats, and the Green League and Left Alliance will probably win one seat each.

The EP elections 2014 will be held during May 22 to 25 to elect a total of 751 members from 28 EU countries.