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.
Read more about this topic: European Parliament
Famous quotes containing the word members:
“It took six weeks of debate in the Senate to get the Arms Embargo Law repealed—and we face other delays during the present session because most of the Members of the Congress are thinking in terms of next Autumn’s election. However, that is one of the prices that we who live in democracies have to pay. It is, however, worth paying, if all of us can avoid the type of government under which the unfortunate population of Germany and Russia must exist.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“...wasting the energies of the race by neglecting to develop the intelligence of the members to whom its most precious resources must be entrusted, already seems a childish absurdity.”
—Anna Eugenia Morgan (1845–1909)
“For splendor, there must somewhere be rigid economy. That the head of the house may go brave, the members must be plainly clad, and the town must save that the State may spend.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)