European Parliament

The European Parliament is the parliamentary body of the European Union (EU), directly elected by EU citizens once every five years. Together with the Council of Ministers, it comprises the legislative branch of the institutions of the Union. It meets in two locations: Strasbourg and Brussels.

Composition

The European Parliament represents around 450 million citizens of the European Union. Its members are known as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Since 13 June 2004, there have been 732 MEPs. Elections occur once in every five years, on the basis of universal adult suffrage. There is not a uniform voting system for the election of MEPs; rather, each member state is free to choose its own system subject to three restrictions1:

Related Topics:
Members of the European Parliament - 13 June - Voting system - 1

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• The system must be a form of proportional representation, under either the party list or Single Transferable Vote system.
• The electoral area may be subdivided if this will not generally affect the proportional nature of the voting system.
• Any election threshold on the national level must not exceed five percent.

The allocation of seats to each member state is based on the principle of degressive proportionality, so that, while the size of the population of each country is taken into account, smaller states elect more MEPs than would be strictly justified by their populations alone. As the number of MEPs granted to each country has arisen from treaty negotiations, there is no precise formula for the apportionment of seats among member states. No change in this configuration can occur without the unanimous consent of all governments.

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The most recent elections to the European Parliament were the European elections of 2004, held in June of that year. These elections were the largest simultaneous transnational elections ever held anywhere in the world, since nearly 400 million citizens were eligible to vote.

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Observers

It is conventional for countries acceding to the European Union to send a number of observers to Parliament in advance. The number of observers and their method of appointment (usually by national parliaments) is laid down in the joining countries' Treaties of Accession.

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Observers may attend debates and take part by invitation, but they may not vote or exercise other official duties. When the countries then become full member states, these observers become full MEPs for the interim period between accession and the next European elections.

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In this way, the agreed maximum of 750 parliamentary seats may temporarily be exceeded. For instance, in 2004, the number of seats in the European Parliament was temporarily raised to 788 to accommodate representatives from the ten states that joined the EU on 1st May, but it was subsequently reduced to 732 following the elections in June.

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Similarly, in Autumn 2005, Bulgaria and Romania will send observers: 18 from Bulgaria and 35 from Romania. These are selected from government and opposition parties as agreed by the countries' national parliaments. In 2007 these observers will become MEPs, but their number is expected to decrease when the number of seats assigned to each country is reassessed, according to the Treaty of Nice.

Related Topics:
Bulgaria - Romania - 2007 - Treaty of Nice

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