On Monday 12 June in Strasbourg, the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) will be asked to decide on a number of options for the composition of the European Parliament for the 2024-2029 term.
In the absence of compromise amendments, all amendments tabled will be put to the vote. Several sources consulted by EUROPE have reported “turbulent” discussions since the political groups took up the issue. On Friday 9 June, it was still unclear how the groups would behave during the vote, with each group’s internal national delegations having specific requests. And it is not certain, in the opinion of one of the negotiators of the text, that the solution found in the AFCO committee will be confirmed 3 days later in plenary!
The main aim of the reform is to establish a distribution of seats in the European chamber that better reflects the principle of ‘degressive proportionality’. According to this principle, the most populous Member States obtain more seats in absolute terms than the less populous countries (in a range from 96 to 6 seats), but the latter obtain more seats per inhabitant.
The current composition of the European Parliament is illegal under the European Treaties, as Parliament’s legal experts have acknowledged. Countries such as Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and Denmark appear under-represented in the European chamber, while Italy, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria are over-represented.
The Treaty limits the composition of the European Parliament to 751 seats. After Brexit, a reserve of 46 seats was created. If transnational lists were to be created, which is highly unlikely between now and the 2024 European elections, 28 seats would be allocated to the new European constituency (see EUROPE 12944/1), leaving 18 seats vacant.
One of the options on the table is that contained in the draft report by Loránt Vincze (EPP, Romanian) and Sandro Gozi (Renew Europe, Italian) (see EUROPE 13129/12). It involves remedying the under-representation of certain countries by allocating them 11 additional seats compared to the current situation (+1 for Denmark, Ireland, Latvia, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland and +2 for Spain and the Netherlands), without reducing the number of MEPs elected in the over-represented countries.
According to our information, this option seems to be the most likely to pass the vote in parliamentary committee.
Led by Rainer Wieland (EPP, German), Domènec Ruiz Devesa (S&D, Spanish) and Guy Verhofstadt (Renew Europe, Belgian), another option suggests maintaining a 705-seat chamber, while allocating additional seats to three countries (+2 for Spain and +1 for the Netherlands and Ireland) and taking one seat away from Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania. But Italy’s over-representation would not be affected. And the prospect of withdrawing a seat will be difficult for the countries concerned to accept in the EU Council.
It should be noted that the Greens/EFA group is proposing to reduce the number of MEP seats to 694 by making over-represented Member States lose seats (-2 seats for Italy, Romania and Bulgaria and -1 seat for Hungary, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia and Lithuania). This reduction is concentrated on over-represented countries and aims to keep control over the cost of democratic life. “Increasing the number of MEPs is not an option”, Niklas Nienass said in a statement.
The option chosen by the parliamentary committee will then be put to the vote at the European Parliament plenary session on Thursday 15 June. Time is of the essence: in order to be applied to the European Parliament, which will go to the polls in June 2024, the formula adopted must be approved unanimously by the Member States at the ‘General Affairs’ Council, then at the June European Council, before being ratified by consent by the European Parliament.
The Swedish Presidency recently expressed its concern about the delay in negotiations on the composition of the European Parliament (see EUROPE 13190/19). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)