It is true that with respect to electoral thresholds, “the wide variety of national provisions makes the development of European standards other than very general ones extremely difficult”, and therefore the Venice Commission and ODIHR do not recommend a specific maximum threshold. Nevertheless, compared with the practice in member states of the Council of Europe and among participating States of the OSCE, the threshold remains exceptionally high for individual parties. Most European countries using the proportional system in elections either do not have any legal threshold at all (e.g. Finland, Ireland, Portugal or Switzerland) or set it at the maximum of 5% (e.g. the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland or Romania). It has to be added that in Türkiye, where seats are allocated at the constituency level and the vast majority of constituencies have fewer than ten seats, the natural threshold has a considerable impact and makes it difficult for small parties to achieve parliamentary representation proportional to their level of support, even if they pass the national threshold of 7 per cent.