The majority of parties refused to promote for a vote the draft bills submitted by the Ministry of the Interior, which amend the legislation so that elections would not be required in the event of the resignation of Fidias Panayiotou as Member of the European Parliament. The bills were considered tailor-made, as Fidias’ seat would pass to EDEK. If Fidias opts for a parliamentary seat, ballot boxes will be set up again in July at a cost of €6 million to the state.
Following the announcement by independent MEP Fidias Panayiotou that he will stand as a candidate in the forthcoming parliamentary elections, the Ministry of the Interior no longer excludes the possibility of elections also being held this July. This is because, if Fidias decides to remain an MP, and his election is considered certain according to opinion polls, the current legislation requires that a by-election be held within 45 days to fill the European Parliament seat that would be vacated. This means that polling stations would need to operate across all electoral centres of the Republic of Cyprus, at an estimated cost to the state of approximately €6 million.
Acting pre-emptively, the Ministry of the Interior submitted two amending bills last December, under which, for the filling of a vacated seat of an independent individual MEP or MP, a by-election would not be required. Instead, the seat would be filled through the second allocation process. However, by decision of the majority of members of the Parliamentary Committee on Internal Affairs, the two amending bills will not be forwarded for a vote.
Gaps in the legislation
According to Article 35 of the Law on the Election of Members of the House of Representatives, the filling of a seat that is not taken up, renounced or vacated is carried out within 45 days by the first runner-up of a party list, coalition list or list of independent candidates, provided that the runner-up still belongs to that list. However, the current legal framework presents a gap regarding the filling of a seat held by an MP who ran as an individual independent candidate. In such a case, there is no runner-up, making a by-election necessary.
The provisions of the Law on the Election of Members of the House of Representatives apply, mutatis mutandis, to elections for Members of the European Parliament, meaning that the same gap affects the procedure for filling seats of independent MEPs, as in the case of Fidias Panayiotou.
Ministry of the Interior: Why the bills should be adopted
During the discussion of the draft bills before the Parliamentary Committee on Internal Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior stated the following:
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The issue concerns the filling of a vacated seat of an MP or MEP elected as an individual independent candidate, resulting in the absence of a runner-up, as is the case with party lists. The current electoral legislation presents problems, as it provides for a nationwide by-election for an MEP and a provincial-level by-election for an MP, within the tight timeframe of 45 days.
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This arrangement is disproportionate to the objective it seeks to serve, namely the filling of a single seat, while generating significant administrative and financial costs. The burden is borne both by the state, which organises and conducts the elections, and by political parties, which face financial and political costs from participating in yet another electoral process. Citizens would also be burdened each time with an estimated €6 million for a by-election to fill a vacant MEP seat and approximately €1 million to fill a vacant parliamentary seat.
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Taking into account the example of the 2024 European elections, during which an individual independent candidate, Fidias Panayiotou, was elected MEP for the first time, there is now a significant possibility that individual candidates may also be elected to the House of Representatives, provided they secure the electoral quota of the first allocation of seats, which ranges between approximately 5,800 and 6,500 votes depending on the electoral district.
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On the basis of the above data, the two bills aim to regulate the issue so that a by-election is not required and the vacated seat is filled as a continuation of the allocation of seats during the preceding general election.
It is noted that the two draft bills do not interfere with the political philosophy of the principal laws and propose procedures that take into account their specific characteristics. In particular, in the case of a vacant parliamentary seat, it is taken into account that, under the provisions of the principal law, independent lists and individual candidates are not entitled to participate in the second allocation of seats. Therefore, the seat can only be filled among party lists. By contrast, in elections for Members of the European Parliament, both individual candidates and independent lists are entitled to participate in the second allocation of seats.
Why the bills will not be voted on now
The two draft bills were recently discussed before the Parliamentary Committee on Internal Affairs, which decided by majority not to forward them for a vote for two main reasons:
There is an unwritten rule that the House of Representatives has observed for years, according to which electoral laws are not amended shortly before elections, in order to avoid actions that could alter electoral outcomes.
The bill concerning the European elections was considered tailor-made, as it specifically targets the case of Fidias Panayiotou. Furthermore, under the changes proposed by the Ministry of the Interior, Fidias’ seat in the European Parliament would pass to EDEK. In other words, Fidias Panayiotou ran as an independent candidate in the European elections, received a total of 71,330 votes, breaking the record previously held by Ioannis Kasoulides since 2004 with 67,251 preference votes, only for the seat to ultimately pass to EDEK.