List of European Union member states by political system

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Member states of the European Union use various forms of democracy. The European Union (EU) is a sui generis supranational union of 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 [[minority group

Consequently, all member states have direct elections, nominally democratic states that are considered to be "free" or "partly free" according to the criteria of Freedom House. As of 2020, there is no expert consensus on how to classify Hungary's regime type; Freedom House considers it a hybrid regime. As of 2015, all European Union member states are representative democracies; however, they do not all have the same political system, with most of the differences arising from different historical backgrounds. Many of the states in the neighbourhood of the European Union are not considered to be "free" by the same criteria. Popular support for the monarchy has historically been higher in Flanders and lower in Wallonia; however, in recent decades these roles have reversed.

There are three types of government systems in European politics: in a presidential system, the president is the head of state and the head of government; in a semi presidential system, the president and the prime minister share a number of competences; finally, in a parliamentary republic, the president is a ceremonial figurehead who has few political competences. As with the definition of constitutional monarchies, sometimes the president does have non ceremonial competences, but does not use them by constitutional convention; this is the case in Austria, for instance. By definition, modern democratic constitutional monarchies are parliamentary, as there is no elected head of state who could assume non ceremonial competences; of the twenty one republican member states of the European Union, only one is a presidential republic (Cyprus) and four are semi presidential republics (France, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania). These four (semi )presidential republics elect their president by direct popular vote. Among the sixteen parliamentary republics, nine do the same (namely Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia), whereas in the remaining seven (Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia and Malta), the president is elected by parliament or other special representative body such as the German Bundesversammlung.

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 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).