How Andorra's parishes and people share one parliament

Who may vote in Andorran elections

The franchise follows nationality and nothing else. Article 24 of the 1993 constitution gives the right of suffrage to "all Andorrans of age", and Article 51 repeats that all Andorran nationals fully enjoying their political rights may vote and stand. Article 25 reserves institutional posts to Andorrans, with exceptions only where the constitution or a treaty provides them. A Spanish or Portuguese resident who has not naturalised has no vote for the General Council, however long the residence.

Holding the nationality rules out a second passport. Article 7 provides that taking or keeping another nationality entails the loss of the Andorran one, on terms set by law, so a naturalising resident gives up the passport already held. The Wikipedia article on the politics of Andorra records a 1995 law that broadened access and sets out the rules: citizenship passes automatically by descent from Andorran nationals, birth on Andorran soil confers nothing, lawful residents from France, Spain or Portugal may apply after ten years, and everyone else after twenty. Children of residents may opt for Andorran nationality at eighteen if they have lived most of their lives in the country.

What that produces is an electorate far smaller than the population it governs. The roll for the general election of 2 April 2023 held 29,958 names, according to the government's own count on the night. Andorra's statistics department put the resident population at 89,165 on 31 January 2026. The sources disagree on the share of residents who hold Andorran nationality: Britannica says half of residents are foreign nationals, and the English Wikipedia article on Andorra says two-thirds lack Andorran nationality, neither with a date. The change over the latest year is dated: in the year to January 2026 the number of Andorran nationals grew by 364, or 0.9%, while residents of other nationalities outside the Spanish, French and Portuguese groups grew by 7.3%, led by arrivals from Colombia, Peru and Argentina.

The restriction reaches beyond the ballot. Non-nationals may not be elected head of government, and the Wikipedia article on the country records that they may hold no more than 33% of the capital of a privately held company.

How the General Council divides its seats

Article 50 describes the General Council as expressing "the mixed and apportioned representation of the national population and of the seven Parishes". Article 52 turns that into arithmetic. The council may have between 28 and 42 members, half elected in equal numbers by each of the seven parishes and half in a single national constituency. It sits at the floor: 28 councillors, 14 chosen by proportional representation on national lists and 14 chosen two per parish by simple majority. It is one chamber carrying both kinds of representation, which the council's own description calls a double representation, national and territorial.

The parish half is the older principle. From the fifteenth century the council was made up of the two consols of each parish and a number of councillors that settled at four per parish, and every parish kept the same weight whatever its size. By the late twentieth century that meant, in the Wikipedia account, that parishes with as few as 350 voters sent as many councillors as parishes with up to 2,600. Immigration drawn by the new economy had filled Andorra la Vella and Escaldes, and the co-princes answered in 1978 by splitting Escaldes-Engordany off from Andorra la Vella as a seventh parish, with the stated aim of rebalancing parish representation. The 1993 constitution added the national half.

The equal parish seats still weigh unequally in electors. The government's figures for 2 April 2023:

An elector in Canillo carried about seven times the parish weight of one in Andorra la Vella on those figures, and every elector cast an equal vote for the 14 national seats. National turnout was 66.95% in 2023, against 68.32% in 2019.

Why the parishes can block electoral reform

The two halves sit in one room. Ordinary resolutions pass by a simple majority of those present, with half the councillors needed for a quorum, and qualified laws need an absolute majority of the whole council. Article 57 makes one class of law an exception. The qualified laws on elections and referendums, on the powers of the parishes and on transfers to them need an absolute majority of the councillors elected in the parish constituencies and, separately, an absolute majority of those elected in the national constituency.

In practice seven of the 14 parish councillors, by withholding their votes, can stop any change to the electoral system, however large the majority in the national half. The equal parish seats can therefore be redrawn only with the consent of the councillors those seats elect.

What the comuns hold in their own right

Each parish is run by an elected local council, the comú, and the constitution treats the comuns as self-governing public corporations. Article 80 lists what a qualified law must leave to them, and the list opens with the population census and the electoral roll, followed by popular consultations, commerce, communal land, natural resources, the cadastre, local planning and public thoroughfares. The comuns can raise traditional levies and taxes on communal services, licences and property.

They also reach into national politics. Three comuns acting jointly may put a bill to the General Council, or challenge a law before the Constitutional Court within thirty days of its publication. Article 81 requires that part of the state's transfers to the parishes be shared in equal amounts, whatever the parish's population, with the remainder divided by population, area and other indicators.

How a head of government is chosen and removed

The executive comes out of the council. Within eight days of its inaugural session, the new council elects the head of government. A candidate needs the nomination of a fifth of the councillors, each councillor may back only one, and the winner needs an absolute majority on the first ballot. If nobody reaches it, the two leading candidates go to a second ballot and the one with more votes is proclaimed. The Síndic General, who presides over the council, presents the result to the co-princes, who appoint the winner, and the Síndic countersigns the appointment.

The head of government picks the ministers, and membership of the government is incompatible with a seat in the council. Nobody may serve more than two consecutive complete terms as head of government, and the same limit applies to the Síndic General and the Subsíndic.

Removal runs through the same chamber. A fifth of the councillors may table a reasoned motion of censure, which passes only with an absolute majority of the whole council. None may be tabled in the six months after a head of government is elected, and its signatories may not table another for a year. The head of government may ask for a vote of confidence and must resign on losing it. Early dissolution needs a request from the head of government to the co-princes and cannot come within a year of the last election, nor once a censure motion has been tabled.

What Andorran voters returned in the spring election

The 2023 election was the first under Law 44/2022, which requires each gender to make up at least 40% of candidates across a list. The Inter-Parliamentary Union recorded 124 candidates, 60 of them women, and 13 women elected to the 28 seats. The largest list and its allies took 17 seats, a new party formed in 2022 took five with an ally, and two further groups took three each. The IPU notes that the campaign turned on the cost of living and on the negotiations with the European Union.

The council keeps two ordinary sessions a year, from 1 March to 15 July and from 1 September to 31 January, and two traditional sittings. On 14 March, the day of the constitution, and on 21 December, the feast of Saint Thomas, the síndics wear the cape and bicorne and the councillors the gambeto and tricorne.

What the co-princes can still refuse

The constitution names the bishop of Urgell and the president of the French Republic, "jointly and indivisibly", as head of state. French voters elect one of them, the see of Urgell supplies the other, and Andorran voters choose neither. Each receives an equal allotment from the state budget and appoints a personal representative in Andorra.

Most of what they do needs a countersignature. Calling elections and referendums, appointing the head of government, dissolving the council, accrediting diplomats, and sanctioning laws and treaties are all acts countersigned by the head of government or the Síndic General, who carries the political responsibility. A law passed by the council goes to each co-prince, who must sanction it between the eighth and fifteenth day. In that window either may send a reasoned message asking the Constitutional Court to rule on its constitutionality. If the court finds it constitutional, the signature of one co-prince is enough.

A co-prince who objects to a law can still threaten to give up the office. In 2014 Bishop Joan Enric Vives i Sicília said he would abdicate as bishop and co-prince if the General Council legalised abortion, which would leave the see empty while the law was promulgated so that no cleric signed it. In 2018 Pope Francis affirmed that Vives would have to abdicate if the law passed, and the English Wikipedia article on the co-princes, revised in July 2026, still records abortion as illegal in Andorra.

The co-princes act alone on a short list. They exercise the prerogative of grace jointly, each appoints one member of the Constitutional Court and one of the High Council of Justice, and either may ask the court for an opinion on a law or a treaty. Treaties touching internal security, defence, diplomatic representation or judicial cooperation with the neighbouring states are negotiated by a delegation that includes one member named by each co-prince, and the text needs their agreement.

Who interprets the Andorran constitution

The Constitutional Court has four magistrates, one appointed by each co-prince and two by the General Council, for terms of eight years with no more than two in a row. The presidency rotates every two years, and Article 97 gives the deciding vote in a tie to a chairman "always chosen by drawing lots". The court hears challenges to laws, rules on treaties before ratification, takes individual appeals for violations of fundamental rights, and settles conflicts between constitutional organs, a category that includes the co-princes, the council, the government, the High Council of Justice and the comuns.

The ordinary courts run in three tiers: the Batllia at first instance in civil, administrative and criminal matters, the Tribunal de Corts for criminal trials, and the Tribunal Superior de Justícia on appeal. They are governed by a five-member High Council of Justice whose members must be Andorran, one named by each co-prince, one by the Síndic General, one by the head of government and one by the judges. Judges serve renewable six-year terms.

Changing the constitution takes three steps. The co-princes jointly or a third of the council may propose an amendment, two-thirds of the council must approve it, and it goes straight to a referendum. The co-princes then sanction it and have no power to refuse.

How Andorra keeps its two neighbours in balance

The constitution describes the co-princes as guarantors of "the spirit of parity in the traditional balanced relation with the neighbouring States". After 1993 Andorra, France and Spain concluded the Treaty of Good Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation, under which both neighbours opened diplomatic relations and undertook to respect Andorra's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. If any of these is threatened, they are to consult the Andorran government on how to safeguard it.

Andorra has no armed forces. The Police Corps, under the Ministry of Justice and Interior, has kept order since a professional police service was created in 1931, and its intervention group handles high-risk operations. The old parish militia, the Sometent, survives in a new form: the Civil Protection Act of 2022 has each comú designate residents aged 18 to 60 who train and can be mobilised in emergencies. The balance shows in small things too. Andorra has no postal service of its own, and French and Spanish post offices operate side by side, each issuing separate Andorran stamps.

The country joined the United Nations in 1993, the Council of Europe in 1994 and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1996. It belongs to the Francophonie and the Ibero-American Conference, one tied to each neighbour's language. It became the 190th member of the International Monetary Fund in 2020, and has held observer status at the World Trade Organization, with an accession working party established in 1997.

What the European Union agreement asks of Andorran voters

Andorra is outside the European Union and bound to it in pieces. A 1989 agreement with the European Economic Community regularised trade relations, and a customs union covering industrial products has been in force since 1991. A monetary agreement signed in 2011 and in force since 2012 made the euro the official currency and lets Andorra issue its own euro coins.

The association agreement negotiated with Andorra and San Marino would go much further, bringing Andorra into the internal market under common rules, with progressive access for financial services and cooperation in research, education, social policy and the environment. The IMF's mission of March 2026 noted transitional periods for telecommunications, tobacco and finance, and called the timeframe for ratification uncertain. In July 2026 the Council of the European Union authorised signature and provisional application. As a mixed agreement it needs the consent of the European Parliament and ratification by Andorra, San Marino and all 27 member states.

The Andorran side of that process runs through the institutions described above. The government plans a consultative referendum once the European Parliament has consented, and if voters approve, the agreement goes to the General Council, where ratification requires two-thirds. Article 65 of the constitution already sets that threshold for any treaty that hands legislative, judicial or executive functions to an international organisation.