European Parliament Election 22 May 2014 - Nominations open

(Please see the UPDATE at the end)

The next election for the European Parliament (EP) will take place between Thursday 22nd May and Sunday 25th May; in the UK the polling day is Thursday 22nd May.

The UK elects 73 members of the EP (MEPs), with the country divided into 12 electoral regions (9 for England and 1 each for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). The 'Scotland Region' elects 6 MEPs. There is a useful Wikipedia page which explains all this in greater detail here.

Candidate nominations opened at 10am on Tuesday 15th April and remain open until 4pm on Thursday 24th April 2014. The Highland Council website has a page providing basic information and links (one of which currently does not work) as follows:
- Highland Council main EP election page is here;
- the 'Notice of Election' with details of how to lodge nominations for the 'Scotland Region' are here (.pdf file).

Full results of the last EP election in 2009 are in the BBC website here.

In my own little blog, I published a few articles on the last EP elections, to which you can find links below if you are interested:
- Is freedom of speech only for those people one happens to agree with? (10JUN2009);
- European elections - my thoughts on the final results (10JUN2009);
- European Parliament elections - rolling results (7JUN2009);
- European Parliament elections - 7 Jun - day 4 (7JUN2009);
- European Parliament elections - 6 Jun - day 3 (6JUN2009);
- European Parliament elections - 5 Jun - day 2 (5JUN2009);
- The moment the polls closed - the knives are out for Brown! (4JUN2009);
- European Parliament elections - 4 June - day 1 (4JUN2009);
- The European Elections voting marathon explained (3JUN2009);
- European Parliament elections - June 2009 (25MAY2009) - election literature received by me.

UPDATE (Thursday 24APR2014 22.43 BST) Nominations are now closed and I have posted a further article here, with full details of all candidates for the Scotland Region.