page_title: List of European Union member states by political system
section_title: Parliamentary chambers
hierarchical_section_title: List of European Union member states by political system / Parliamentary chambers
context_page_description: This is a list of European Union member states, their forms of government and their parliaments. The European Union is a sui generis supranational union of democratic states. At a European Council Summit held in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 June and 22 June 1993, the European Union defined the Copenhagen criteria regarding the conditions a candidate country has to fulfill to be considered eligible for accession to the European Union:
  Membership criteria require that the candidate country must have achieved:
  stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities;
  the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union;
  the ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.
  Consequently, all European Union member states are directly elected democracies that are considered to be "free" according to the criteria of Freedom House.
context_section_description: A further distinction is the number of chambers in the national legislature; unicameral systems with one chamber or bicameral ones with a lower house and an upper house. Federations and countries with strong regional differences or regional identities are normally bicameral, to reflect the regions' interests in national bills. The states with the larger populations, from the Netherlands upwards, all have a bicameral system. Although there is a greater mix among the smaller states (some influenced by their federalist structure), the smallest states are on the whole unicameral.
  While there had been legislatures with more than two chambers (tricameral and tetracameral ones), nowadays there are only unicameral and bicameral ones. Additionally, there are also differences in the degree of bicameralism. Whereas Italy is considered as having "perfect bicameralism", with both chambers being equal, most other bicameral systems restrict the upper house's powers to a certain extent. There is a slight trend towards unicameralism; some upper houses have seen their powers reduced or proposals to that end. Belgium's system has been reduced from a perfectly bicameral one to a nowadays de facto unicameral system. In 2009, Romania voted in favour of unicameralism, on a plebiscite, however the country still has a bicameral system, as of 2020. On the other hand, Ireland narrowly voted against abolishing their upper house in 2013, and Italy voted not to reduce its Senate's powers in 2016.
  In the member states of the European Union, if the parliament has only one chamber, it is wholly directly elected in all cases. If there are two chambers, the lower house is directly elected in all cases, while the upper house can be directly elected (e.g. the Senate of Poland); or indirectly elected, for example, by regional legislatures (e.g. the Federal Council of Austria); or non-elected, but representing certain interest groups (e.g. the National Council of Slovenia).
caption:   unicameral   bicameral