Proportional representation

Without having planned it, Greece and Turkey will be marching to the pace imposed by each country's upcoming general elections in the first half of this year. As a rule, politicians focus their campaigns on domestic issues that mainly affect voters, leaving diplomacy aside.

Government sources Wednesday ruled out a general election before April this year.

"The prime minister remains steadfast to his commitment that elections will be held at the end of his four-year term. He will decide what the appropriate date is after April," sources said after a meeting at Maximos Mansion chaired by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece's conservative leader.

At its first meeting on Wednesday, the legal committee of the new Bulgarian Parliament took up proposed changes in the election legislation - a total of six bills - and a draft moratorium on some decisions made by the outgoing government.

Many Greek municipalities have been paralyzed since the last elections were held using the simple proportional representation system legislated by the previous SYRIZA administration.

In the Romanian parliamentary elections after 1989, two voting systems were applied: voting by list and distribution according to the principle of proportional representation (1990-2004 and 2016 elections) and mixed system, in which the vote was uninominal and the distribution of the mandates was of the proportional representation type (2008 and 2012 elections).

A new draft bill on electoral law was introduced to the parliament plenary on Thursday that foresees a change in the simple proportional representation legislated by the previous SYRIZA government.

During his separate meetings with opposition party leaders on Friday to brief them on his trip to the US and his administration's stance on key national issues, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also gave each a copy of the government's full plan for an overhaul of the electoral system.

Greece's conservative government is mulling the reintroduction of the party-list system in European Parliament elections in a bid to promote the emergence of serious but less recognizable candidates, Kathimerini understands. 

The People's Movement Party (PMP) and the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) candidates to Romania's presidency, Theodor Paleologu and Kelemen Hunor, maintained on Saturday, during a debate organised within the "Know your candidate" campaign, that a constitutional reform is needed, however each having different opinions on the topic.

Moldovan deputies voted on Wednesday to scrap their much criticised "mixed" voting system, made it easier for Moldovans living abroad to vote, and restored the former proportional voting system.