Secret ballot

The mail-in ballot will be used for the first time in Greece at the European Parliament elections in June, after its vote in parliament, the government said.

The relevant bill by the Interior Ministry has been posted for public consultation until January 10, and will be tabled in parliament shortly after.

More than 18 million Romanian voters are expected to go to the polls on Sunday at over 18,000 polling stations to open in the country to elect their representatives to the new Parliament. Senators and MPs are elected by ballot, according to the principle of proportional representation. Voting in the country takes place on a single day - Sunday, from 07:00hrs to 21:00hrs.

Millions of citizens will be voting today until 5 p.m. local time at 180,065 ballot boxes in all 81 provinces of Turkey and live results will be here at Hürriyet Daily News after the first ballots are counted.

The Catalan parliament on Friday afternoon declared the region's independence from Spain.

Members of this parliament decided in a secret ballot - boycotted by the opposition.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has said it will object to the referendum results on grounds that the vote for the constitutional amendment were manipulated in terms of content and method, a party senior has said, while the state-run Anadolu Agency concluded the results as a tight win for the "yes" vote. 

Turkey's parliament has approved the first two items of an 18-article constitutional amendment package to shift the current parliamentary system to an executive presidency by respective votes of 343 and 347 amid serious opposition criticism over government MPs' violations of the requirement to vote secretly. 

Parliament voted in favor of launching debates on a constitutional amendment package for a comprehensive change in Turkey's governance system to create an executive presidency with the votes of 338 out of 550 deputies, eight more than required.