EUROPEAN ELECTIONS TO WATCH IN 2017

March: Dutch Parliamentary Election

This is the first of several flashpoints in western Europe’s struggle against hard-right populism. General elections are planned to be held in the Netherlands on 15 March 2017 to elect all 150 members of the House of Representatives or Second Chamber (Tweede Kamer) by proportional representation in a single nationwide constituency. The office of Prime Minister is traditionally taken up by the leader of the party coming first in the elections, meaning there is an incentive for parties and voters to concentrate their vote. Anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders, is vying for first place in the polls with Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right People’s Party. If the polls are right it’s going to be very close, and could end with Wilders’ party winning (albeit probably needing to find coalition partners) or coming a close second, meaning there’s a possibility Wilders might end up in coalition with another party. A solid Wilders win that allows him to form a government would see crackdowns on the Netherlands’ Muslim population at home, and a dramatically Euroskeptic turn abroad. A solid Rutte win where he doesn’t need Wilders as a partner (the performance of Rutte’s current partner, the Labor party, will be important here). Rutte is a pro-European moderate of calm temperament and his continued presence at the helm would be a relief for the EU establishment.

April: Serbian Presidential Election

The Serbian presidency is a largely ceremonial position. But any national election in the country, which is an EU candidate state that also faces significant attempts from Russia to wield influence, could be interesting in geopolitical terms. The incumbent, Tomislav Nikolic, is a nationalist who has expressed strong pro-Russian views. He is also a former member of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, whose leader the country’s Prime Minister, Aleksander Vučić treads a path between appeasing the nationalist right and backing EU membership. Vojislav Seselj, Serbian Radical Party leader and a former close ally of Slobodan Milosevic, is standing, following an acquittal on war crimes charges relating to the 1990s Balkan conflicts in the Hague earlier this year. However, his party took only 8 percent of the national vote in the recent parliamentary elections. A second term for Nikolic would mean more of the same: shaky progress toward EU accession, balanced with occasional pro-Russian maneuvers.

April and May: French Presidential Election

There are likely to be at least four serious challengers in the race: François Fillon, the winner of this year’s center-right primary and a fan of Britain’s Margaret Thatcher; Marine Le Pen, who has led her far-right National Front out of the wilderness and within touching distance of the presidency with a blend of anti-immigrant rhetoric and economic populism; Emmanuel Macron, the former economy minister now running as an independent with a Tony Blair-esque, reforming, centrist platform; and whoever wins the primary for the center-left socialists. Parliamentary elections will then take place in June.  If Le Pen wins, the EU will be approaching real crisis the hard-right candidate is pro-Russia and vehemently anti-Brussels. But a Macron win (unlikely but possible) would be seismic in its own way: a victory for centrism at a time when reports of its death are everywhere. Pollsters say the most likely scenario is a face-off between Fillon and Le Pen in the second round, leading to a comfortable Fillon victory. There’s also the slightest of possibilities that the unpopular Socialist party, currently in power, might persuade voters to give it another chance with a new candidate, meaning four years of continuity.

The first round of the 2017 French presidential election will be held on 23 April 2017. Should no candidate win an outright majority, a run-off between the top two will be held on 7 May 2017. Incumbent president François Hollande declined to run for a second term on 1 December 2016. The Socialist Party will hold a presidential primary in January 2017. After the Republican’s presidential primary runoff held on 27 November 2016, former Prime Minister François Fillon emerged as the party's nominee, beating the moderate former Prime Minister Alain Juppé by a wide margin. Fillon will be the party's nominee for the presidential race. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, is the third significant frontrunner in the presidential race. Legislative elections are scheduled to take place on 11 and 18 June 2017 to elect the members of the 15th National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic. The 577 members of the National Assembly are elected from single-member constituencies using the two-round system. Citizens may field their candidacies in a district, and participate in the first round. If a single candidate obtains over 50% of the vote, as well as a minimum of 25% of all registered voters, they win. If no candidate meets these criteria, a second round is held in which the two most-voted candidates from the first round, plus any other candidate who obtained above 12.5%, are allowed to participate. Of the 577 constituencies, 539 are in Metropolitan France, 27 are in overseas departments and territories and 11 are for French citizens living abroad.

September: Norwegian Parliamentary Election

The incumbent government is a minority administration comprised of ministers from two parties—the populist Progress Party and the center-right Conservatives (led by Prime Minister Erna Solberg)—and propped up by two more: the Liberal Party and the Christian Democratic Party. An alliance of left-wing parties, led by Labour Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre, will battle with it for power. If the Christian Democrats switch support and the left puts in a decent electoral performance, the government could change. Rising oil prices would boost the economy, and could keep the government sitting pretty.

Before October 23: German Parliamentary Election

The country has its own hard-right populists on the rise, but in reality the German election to the Bundestag could well end up being 2017’s least dramatic vote. Chancellor Angela Merkel, arguably Europe’s most powerful politician, has faced searing attacks from her own party’s right flank, and from the hard-right populist Alternative for Germany (AFD), formed only in 2013 and already polling between 10 and 15 percent. But while that’s sparked excitable headlines, Merkel still commands about 35 percent support: 10 percent ahead of her center-left coalition partners the Social Democrats (SPD), and 20 points ahead of the far right. Any result that saw Merkel toppled would send shockwaves through Europe. Merkel’s position is far stronger than the coverage suggests, especially as the AFD would struggle to form a coalition with anyone, even if it performed better than expected. Europe’s great survivor could well survive once again.

German law requires that the next election should take place on a Sunday between 46–48 months after the assembly's first sitting. Since the current Bundestag first sat on 22 October 2013, the latest date for the next election is 22 October 2017. The earliest date is 27 August 2017, the first Sunday after 22 August 2017. By convention, recent elections have been held in late September, avoiding the school holidays.The Bundestag has 598 nominal members, elected for a four-year term. Half, 299 members, are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting, while a further 299 members are allocated from party lists to achieve a proportional distribution in the legislature, conducted according to a form of proportional representation called the Mixed member proportional representation system (MMP). Voters vote once for a constituency representative, and a second time for a party, and the lists are used to make the party balances match the distribution of second votes. Seats are allocated using the Sainte-Laguë method. If a party receives more seats than its vote share entitles it to (overhang seats), additional "compensatory" seats are added to the total of 299 to give other parties a proportional number of seats.Voters have two votes, one for the candidate in the single-member constituency and one for the party list in the multi-member constituency.