Under the
Lisbon Treaty, which first applied to the
2014 European Parliament election, the cap on the number of seats was raised to 750, with a maximum of 96 and a minimum of 6 seats per state. They continue to be distributed "degressively proportional" to the populations of the EU's member states. There was controversy over the fact that the population figures are based on residents, not citizens, resulting in countries with larger disenfranchised immigrant populations gaining more under Lisbon than those with smaller ones. Italy would have been the greatest loser under the Lisbon system and sought the same number of MEPs as France and the United Kingdom. Italy raised the issue during
treaty negotiations and succeeded in gaining one extra MEP (giving it the same as the UK) while the
President of the European Parliament would not be counted as a lawmaker hence keeping the number of MEPs to the 750-seat limit.
2011 amendment In 2011 an amendment, which came into force on 1 December, temporarily increased the Lisbon limit to 754. This allowed member states who gained seats under Lisbon to take them before the 2014 election, while allowing Germany which lost seats under Lisbon to retain them until the 2014 election. This amendment, in effect, institutes a transitional manner of distributing MEPs to take account of the fact that the 2009 European Parliamentary elections took place under the rules contained in the
Nice Treaty and not in the
Lisbon Treaty. That result means that member state that are to gain seats in parliament under the Lisbon rules may take them, but that Germany which loses three seats under the Lisbon rules keeps those seats until the next elections, due in 2014. As a result, Germany temporarily exceeds the maximum number of MEPs allocatable to a member state under the Lisbon Treaty by having 99 MEPs, three above the intended limit.
2013 amendment Following the
accession of Croatia on 1 July 2013 with 12 extra seats, the apportionment was amended for the
2014 elections, MEP
Andrew Duff (
ALDE, UK) has advocated within the European Parliament for a reform of EU electoral law for the 2014 elections, including the creation of a single constituency of 25 seats in which each European citizen would be entitled to vote on the basis of pan-European lists. He has been nominated rapporteur, as the European Parliament has the right of initiative in this field ruled by unanimity in the Council. After the 2009 election, Duff proposed a new version of his report, which was adopted by the parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) in April 2011. However, the plenary session of the Parliament referred the report back to the AFCO committee in July 2011. A third version of the report was published in September 2011 and adopted by the AFCO committee in January 2012, but was withdrawn before being discussed in plenary in March 2012 for fear that it would likely be turned down. On 13 March 2013 the
European Parliament voted a new proposal updating seat assignments per country for 2014, A plan to reduce the number of seats to 705 was approved by the Parliament in February 2018. It involves redistributing 27 seats to under-represented members and reserving the remaining 46 for future EU expansions. A proposal by the Constitutional Affairs Committee to create a pan-member constituency was rejected by the Parliament at the same time. The proposed redistribution did not occur due to the
Brexit extension until 31 October, and the allocation used was the same as in 2014. After Brexit took legal effect, the seat distribution was decided by the European Council. Those countries which were allocated additional seats elected MEPs who only took office after Brexit had taken effect.
2024 election In February 2023, the
AFCO committee of the European Parliament released a draft report (whose rapporteurs are
Lóránt Vincze and
Sandro Gozi) on the necessary changes to the composition of the European Parliament in order to respect the principle of degressive proportionality (enshrined in the
TEU). The draft report suggested a new apportionment which aimed at respecting the degressive proportionality while also resulting in no loss of seats for any Member State, therefore leading to an expansion in the number of MEPs, from 705 to 716. On 12 June 2023, the report was approved by the AFCO committee, with the apportionment being unchanged compared to the draft report. On 15 June 2023 the report was approved by the EP plenary. In July 2023, the
European Council put forward its own proposed apportionment for the tenth European Parliament, which would add 15 new MEPs and thus take the number of seats from 705 to 720. In this proposal, no Member State would lose any spots in the hemicycle and the countries gaining new seats would be as indicated in the table below under
New allocation of seats (final decision for 2024). On 15 September 2023, the European Parliament approved the apportionment proposed by the Council, with 515 votes in favor, 74 against and 44 abstentions. Furthermore, this decision envisages the future (before the 2029–2034 parliamentary term) definition of "
an objective, fair, durable and transparent seat distribution method implementing the principle of degressive proportionality, without prejudice to the institutions’ prerogatives under the Treaties". Degressive proportionality breached. == Changes in membership ==