European Parliament - Members

Members

The parliamentarians are known in English as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). They are elected every five years by universal adult suffrage and sit according to political allegiance; about a third are women. Before 1979 they were appointed by their national parliaments.

Under the Lisbon Treaty, seats are allocated to each state according to population and the maximum number of members is set at 751 (however, as the President cannot vote while in the chair there will only be 750 voting members at any one time).

The seats are distributed according to "degressive proportionality", i.e., the larger the state, the more citizens are represented per MEP. Thus, Maltese and Luxembourgian voters have roughly 10x more influence than citizens of the six large countries.

Germany (82,5 million inhabitants) has 96 seats, i.e. one seat for 859 000 inhabitants. Malta (0,4 million inhabitants) has 6 seats, i.e. one seat for 67 000 inhabitants.

It is intended that the new system implemented under the Lisbon Treaty, including revising the seating well before elections, will avoid political horse trading when the allocations have to be revised to reflect demographic changes.

Pursuant to this apportionment, the constituencies are formed. In six EU member states (Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom), the national territory is divided into a number of constituencies. In the remaining member states, the whole country forms a single constituency. Currently, all member states hold elections to the European Parliament using various forms of proportional representation.