One of the world’s largest democratic exercises is underway, with some 373 million people across the European Union eligible to vote in elections for the next European Parliament.

Voters in the 27 nations of the EU head to the polls from Thursday to Sunday to elect 720 members of the parliament, which will play a crucial role in shaping the priorities and political direction of the bloc for the next five years.

The vote comes at a pivotal moment for the EU, which is grappling with issues ranging from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to immigration and climate change. Polls have predicted big gains for hard-right parties in a number of countries, which could have long-term implications for the continent.

Here’s what you need to know about the world’s biggest multi-country election.

How do the elections work?

The elections are held over four days every five years in June. This year, they are taking place between June 6 and 9.

They are held over multiple days because, despite being elections to an EU institution, they are still arranged and managed as national ballots by each of the EU’s 27 member states. In some countries, they may all be held on a single day, whereas others take place over several days.

Because the elections are managed at a national level, they are not all carried out in the same exact way. However, they must all employ a proportional representation system –where the number of lawmakers elected to the parliament directly correlates to the percentage of people who voted for them.

Once all the votes have been counted, each national political party will be assigned a number of members of European Parliament (MEPs) relative to their vote share. It is up to the member states to determine how this is assigned.

Once they have been appointed to the parliament, MEPs can then join a European political party, which allows them to sit in a group in the parliament. These parties and groupings are multinational and based on a loose set of shared beliefs. The bigger the grouping, the more influence it has in parliament.

Results will start to come in late on Sunday, but full results will not be known until at least Monday.

What’s the point of the European Parliament and what do MEPs do?

The European Parliament sits primarily in Brussels, Belgium, but moves roughly once a month to Strasbourg, France. It is the legislative branch of the EU and one of the bloc’s three main institutions – along with the European Commission, which is the executive branch, and the European Council, which is made up of ministers from the governments of the 27 member states.

It is the only EU institution where representatives are directly elected, and MEPs pass laws which are applied all over the bloc. In order for any legislation to be implemented, both the council and parliament have to agree.

One of the parliament’s most crucial roles is approving the makeup of the commission, which is ultimately responsible for the political direction of the world’s largest trading bloc, and it has the final say on who is appointed as president of the commission. Currently the top job is filled by Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen, who is seeking a second term at the helm.

The parliament also has ultimate approval over the billions of euros allocated in the EU budget. It often has the final word on major policy issues such as the budget, trade and sanctions on foreign nationals.

The parliament can also put major international objectives in the deep freeze. For example, A comprehensive mutual investment agreement between the EU and China is effectively on hold while some MEPs are under sanctions from China. The parliament as a whole has refused to advance the agreement until the sanctions are lifted.

What are the biggest issues in this vote?

Since this week’s election is in effect 27 individual national elections, some issues are in play in some countries but not in others.

Broadly speaking, immigration, climate change, security and support for Ukraine are issues that matter across the bloc.

While irregular migration figures are lower than they were during the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, it is still a sensitive issue across the EU, as some countries bear a disproportionate share of the burden while others are loathe to do their part.

Slowing the effects of climate change and making Europe greener has been a priority for a long time. However, some countries now balk at the cost of cutting fossil fuel emissions.

The EU is largely united on its support for Ukraine, but that too could be affected if populists like France’s Marine Le Pen are elected to lead national governments.

What are the political groupings?

If the 720 MEPs representing 27 countries and hundreds of different domestic political parties were all left to their own devices, things would get very complicated.

To simplify the work of the parliament, leaders of national governments form alliances with each other based on their shared political beliefs – the European political parties.

If a politician is a member of, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party in France, he or she will stand for that party as an MEP at a national level. If they are then elected to the European Parliament, they will join the centrist, liberal European party, Renew Europe – which currently has members from 24 of the 27 EU members. Once seated in parliament, they will sit alongside the other MEPs from Renew parties in other countries as a political grouping.

There are seven main groupings, ranging from the extremes of the far right to the far left.

The two dominant groupings are the center-right conservative European People’s Party (EPP) and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D). Due to proportional representation, no single group has anything resembling a majority and therefore they must form broad coalitions to get anything done in parliament. The EPP and S&D (or their previous incarnations) have dominated this coalition for decades.

While these two parties are still expected to be the largest after the elections, all eyes are on the other main right-wing groups, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the hard-right, populist Identity and Democracy (ID).

What’s likely to happen in the election?

It is expected that the EPP and S&D centrist coalition will largely hold.

However, it is also expected that ECR and ID will make significant gains that result in more power in the next parliament.

The two hard-right parties have not said they will work together and the leaderships of the two groups are known to dislike each other. Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister and president of the ECR bloc, has an eye on working with the mainstream right at an EU level, for instance.

During the 2022 Italian general election, much was made of Meloni’s right-wing rhetoric. She was a hardliner on immigration, and had questioned LGBTQ+ rights, among other things.

However, since winning she has been pragmatic in working with those in power at a European level – most notably von der Leyen, the commission’s president, who is herself a member of the more mainstream EPP. Von der Leyen even went so far as to visit the Italian island of Lampedusa, which has been an arrival point for large numbers of irregular migrants, to set out a 10-point EU plan to support Italy with the influx.

Critics say that Meloni has sold out; supporters say that she has played her cards perfectly and managed to pull the EU’s center in her direction. Evidence of this might be the EU having finally agreed a deal earlier this year on how it would share the weight of irregular migration, after years of deadlock and negotiation.

How could the election affect European politics?

The possibility that the EU’s political center might be up for grabs is the most important context of these elections. The opaque and fluid nature of politics at a European level means that a lot can change over the course of a five-year period.

Between the EPP and S&D, there might be a centrist coalition on day one of this new parliament. But these are not formal coalitions, rather loose alliances that vote together, issue by issue. This is where the idea of a right-wing ECR and ID axis becomes significant.

The rise of the far-right’s influence in European Parliament follows a similar trend at the national level in a number of major EU member states.

National elections are set to take place in France in 2027, in which right-wing populist Le Pen could emerge victorious. She is the chair of ID and has recently made obvious efforts to detoxify the bloc by expelling lawmakers from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) from its ranks following accusations of antisemitism. 

A victory in the French presidential election would of course make Le Pen a much bigger major player in European politics. That might not mean any formal coalition between the center-right EPP and ID, but the politics of the European Parliament is a sliding scale of sorts and, if France shifts right, it’s fair to say the center-right will take note.

There are EPP members (and certainly ECR members) who will agree with ID members on matters such as immigration and climate change. When those issues come up and the parliament has a role to play, it’s not implausible that the ECR and ID could then put huge pressure on EPP lawmakers to vote the same way.

It is, after all, always worth remembering that these people must still answer to their domestic voters, who can sack them at the next election.