EWSI examined the political parties of each EU Member State, and not the political groups of the European Parliament. Where political parties formed coalitions and ran as a single electoral list, the coalition is considered to be one party, following the European Parliament’s reporting of election results. Programmes of independent candidates are not part of this analysis.

EWSI examined the programmes and manifestos (used interchangeably) of the political parties—in other words, the published statements of political parties that outline their key priorities and goals. EWSI focused on the parties’ official programmes, which may have been published as a (pdf) document or as a dedicated section of the party’s website. The analysis does not include politicians’ blog posts, statements recounted by the media or outside analyses or compilations of the parties’ positions and programmes.

Party coalitions typically published joint programmes. In rare cases, coalition partners published separate programmes, in which case this analysis considers the different programmes to come from the same party.  The lack of overall detail in some party programmes impacts the results, as the analysis cannot include ideas or proposals that are not formally documented as the party’s programme.

The analysis only looked at programmes published specifically for the 2019 European Parliament elections. Thus, it does not include the parties’ general programmes. In some countries, the European Parliament elections took place simultaneously with other elections. A small number of parties combined the programmes for the different elections into a single document. The analysis tried to include only the programme points that were relevant for the EU elections, but it is not always possible to make a distinction.