Today in the Netherlands is the day on which the candidate lists for the European elections are registered

The deadline for European citizens registered in the Netherlands to submit a special form if they want to vote here in June’s European Parliament elections expires today, the government said on its website.
In 2019, only 12% of EU citizens had expressed this desire, and then the government announced that it would do more to encourage people to do so, the website DutchNews recalls. The Y32 form that European citizens in the Netherlands must complete has been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Polish and Spanish. With it, they must declare that they will not vote in another country. To prevent people from voting twice, the information is checked with other EU member states. You can only vote once in the European elections, the website of the Dutch government reminds.
Today there is another deadline: candidates for MEPs are registered in the Electoral Council. On Monday, April 29, the Electoral Council will rule in an open meeting on the validity of the candidate lists.
The European elections in the Netherlands are on June 6. The country is the first and only one where the election is on this day, the first of four dates on which the European Parliament is voted on (June 6-9, 2024).
In the Netherlands, voters will elect 31 members of the European Parliament, which is 5 more than in the 2019 elections. This increase is due to Brexit as well as population growth in the Netherlands, the European Parliament website notes.
Louise van Schaik, head of EU and global affairs at the Clingendael Diplomatic Academy in The Hague, told DutchNews that the key issues for voters in the Netherlands will be migration, the green transition and the cost of living.
There are concerns that the country is not handling migration well and the debate is about refugees, migrants from other EU countries, people from Ukraine and international students, she says. As for the transition to greener energy, there are questions about whether the EU has pushed it “too hard and too fast”, especially for farmers and households.
However, according to a Euronews-Ipsos survey, more than half of European voters continue to see climate change as a priority. The state of the climate is also among the top three priorities for Dutch voters according to the latest Eurobarometer survey.
Van Schaik says the vote in the Netherlands will be particularly influenced by the ability of political parties to form a new government and meet voters’ expectations after Geert Wilders’ eurosceptic Freedom Party won almost 25 percent of the vote in November’s election.