About
HowTheyVote.eu makes vote results of the European Parliament transparent and accessible – for citizens, journalists, researchers, and activists.
The European Union is one of the largest democracies in the world. The European Parliament, with its 720 members from the EU’s 27 member states, represents just over 440 million Europeans. Although the Parliament publishes information such as agendas, minutes, and vote results on its website, it can be quite difficult to find out what MEPs voted on or how a particular vote turned out. HowTheyVote.eu compiles voting data from various official sources and allows anyone to search for votes and view the results.
General information
I found incorrect data or a missing vote.
Please use this form to report data errors (such as missing votes or incorrect vote results). Thanks for your help! Your report helps us to improve the data quality on HowTheyVote.eu!
How often is the data on HowTheyVote.eu updated?
HowTheyVote.eu collects data in an automated way. During a plenary sessions we fetch the latest vote results multiple times per day. Usually, vote results are available on HowTheyVote.eu within 30 minutes after they have been published by the European Parliament.
I am looking for a specific vote. Why can't I find it on HowTheyVote.eu?
Currently, only roll-call votes can be found on HowTeyVote.eu. Other types of votes, such as secret votes or simple votes by show of hands cannot be found. If you think a roll-call vote is missing, please report it using this form.
What is a roll-call vote?
In case of a roll-call vote the individual votes cast by each MEP are recorded and published as part of the plenary minutes. However, not every vote in the European Parliament is a roll-call vote. Only when requested by a certain threshold of MEPs a roll-call vote is taken.
What do the different values for the voting behavior mean?
There are four possible values for the voting behavior of an MEP: "For", "Against", "Abstention", and "Did not vote". "Did not vote" means that the MEP did not participate in the vote, for example because the MEP was not present while the vote took place. "For", "Against", and "Abstention" are options that the MEP actively chose at the time of the vote.
Where can I find the results of non-roll-call votes?
HowTheyVote.eu currently does not provide data about non-roll-call votes. However, you can refer to the official vote results published on the European Parliament website.
Where can I find the results of committee votes?
HowTheyVote.eu currently does not provide data about votes in committees. You can find committee vote results on the website of the respective committee.
Where can I find the results of votes on amendments?
While HowTheyVote.eu collects the results of votes on amendments, this data is currently not displayed on our website. We plan to implement this feature in the future. In the meantime, you can find the results of votes on amendments on the European Parliament website.
Where does the European Parliament publish official vote results?
The European Parliament publishes vote results for roll-call and non-roll-call vote results on its website. The European Parliament also publishes a growing number of datasets, including vote results, in machine-readble formats in the European Parliament Open Data Portal.
Where can I find vote results for previous terms/years?
Where can I find vote corrections?
Methodology
What is the source for the data on HowTheyVote.eu?
HowTheyVote.eu compiles voting data from multiple official sources, including the roll-call vote results published as part of the plenary minutes, data about legislative procedures from the Legislative Observatory, and press releases published by the European Parliament. You can find a list of sources for each vote on the vote detail pages on HowTheyVote.eu.
Is the data on HowTheyVote.eu complete?
HowTheyVote.eu currently only collects data about roll-call votes. We currently do not provide data about other votes. All data for HowTheyVote.eu is collected and processed in a fully automated way. While we aim to provide complete and correct data, we cannot rule out the possibility that individual votes are missing or contain errors. If you think there’s missing data on HowTheyVote.eu or have found an error, please contact us.
What is a featured vote?
HowTheyVote.eu marks a vote as featured when we have found a press release about the vote published by the European Parliament. However, we are not always able to reliably link press releases to votes. In the future, we may use additional indicators for featured votes.
Reusing the data
I’m a journalist, researcher, or activist. Can I use your data?
Yes! We provide access to the HowTheyVote.eu data under an open license. If you use data published by HowTheyVote.eu please make sure you’ve read the license terms and provide proper attribution. If you publish your work, we'd appreciate if you could share a copy or link with us! We are always curious to see how others use voting data.
How should I cite HowTheyVote.eu?
You can cite HowTheyVote.eu in the same way you would cite any other online resource or dataset. If you use data published by HowTheyVote.eu please make sure you’ve read the license terms and provide proper attribution.
How can I download the data?
We currently provide multiple different ways to download data from HowTheyVote.eu. Data for individual votes can be downloaded in JSON and CSV formats using the links on vote pages on HowTheyVote.eu. We also provide an experimental API. A regularly updated export of our dataset can also be found on GitHub.
Can I download all available data at once?
Yes, we publish a weekly updated export of our dataset and documentation of the data schema on GitHub. If you have any feedback or questions, please contact us using the email address below.
License
The voting data made available via downloads and the HowTheyVote.eu API is made available under the Open Database License. Any rights in individual contents of the database are licensed under the Database Contents License, unless otherwise noted.
In particular, photos (including thumbnails) of MEPs and vote summaries are not covered by the Database Contents License. These contents are sourced from the official website of the European Parliament. Please refer to the respective copyright notice.
Related work
- Parltrack is an open source project that improves access to information about legislative processes, including (but not limited to) vote results of the European Parliament.
- abgeordnetenwatch.eu is a German NGO that allows citizen to publicly ask questions elected representatives in the federal and state parliaments as well as the European Parliament questions. abgeordnetenwatch.eu also publishes voting records of German MEPs for selected votes.
- The European Parliament Open Data Portal provides access to a growing collection of machine-readable datasets, including vote results.
- VoteWatch Europe was an NGO that maintained a database of vote results. VoteWatch shut down operations in 2022, but the VoteWatch dataset covering votes between July 2004 up to June 2022 has been published.
Funding and sponsors
A first version of HowTheyVote.eu has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education as part of the 9th round of the Prototype Fund under the funding reference 1IS21818.
Tuta supports HowTheyVote.eu with a secure and ad-free email account.
Contact
You can contact us via email at mail [at] howtheyvote.eu.