#Belgium ; Luxembourg and the Netherlands - that was silly of me ; I do know they're in the EU I just forgot to list them. Not that bad

[everythingthatsgoingon]

I'm too lazy to look it up, so I'm hoping tumblr will answer me.

In France we have 38 lists ! It's a record. Last time it was 34, and already a record.

At most 20 lists can get deputies (as lists need a score of at least 5% to get deputies). According to current polls, between 5 and 7 lists - those from the main parties, who get most if not all of the media's attention - are expected to make the cut.

There's logistical difficulties as there needs to be temporary billboards in front of every polling station with enough space for every party to put up an A1 poster - it's too much for isolated towns and villages, who realistically will at most have 10 posters up on those billboards because most lists don't have the financial means to pay for a company to put up their posters all over the country. It costs like 200 000 euros, and they already need to pay to print the posters. And most parties/list do not have a 200 000 € budget anyway. What money they have they might prioritise towards printing and distributing their ballot papers - and with budgets under 200 000 €, they can't print enough to have 1 per voter, let alone 2 and have the second sent with the "profession of faith" letters voters receive in the week before the election. They most often can't print those professions of faith to send either.

But anyway, yeah, 38 lists, meaning 3078 French citizens are candidates to fill the 81 French seats in the EU parliament. A bit more men than women, since a majority of lists have a male first candidate.