In their 2018 joint opinion, the Venice Commission and ODIHR recalled that “there is no European standard on electoral thresholds” and that “electoral thresholds are used as a mechanism to balance fair representation of views in the Parliament with effectiveness in the Parliament and capacity to form stable governments. How this balance is struck and how thresholds are used to this aim differs between countries and electoral systems”. However, they stressed that the assessment of the electoral threshold is subject to a proportionality test and that this test needs to take account of the political history and the context of a country as well as of other features of the electoral system.