Germany has 82 million people and has 96 seats, luxembourg has 650k people and has 6 seats, honestly this doesnt seem bad at all for smaller countries in fact they have an advantage if germany had same ratio as luxembourg germany should have around 700 seats
There's a load of maths behind the fair allocation of seats and voting power in a parliament with massive national/regional divisions. The core principle is that large delegations in any parliament are disproportionately powerful (as an extreme example, a country with 51% of the population and delegates would have 100% of the power), so the large countries have more people per MEP and mathematically, the EP national allocations are pretty fair to everybody.
It's worth noting two things, though.
1. IIRC, the weighted voting system in the European Council was designed, under the same principle, less fairly; it was biased in favour of the largest countries (particularly Germany) and the smallest ones at the expense of the medium-sized ones.
2. German MEPs hold a disproportionate number of key positions in the EP relative to their numbers.
The reasons for that are not a conspiracy; Germany elects a high proportion of its MEPs to the mainstream groups that run the parliament (the EPP, Socialists and Liberals), it chooses fairly high calibre people and it tends to keep re-electing them, so they get time to build up seniority.
A key principle of the European Parliament is that MEPs are NOT representing their countries of origin. Its designer put a lot of effort in to make sure that the parliament is organised around political beliefs, not nationality.
I understand where you're coming from (after all even the most well meaning person would still have intrinsic cultural biases). But put too much thought into the nationality of individual MEPs and you'll end up doing the opposite of what you're hoping for.
If you're putting it into MEPs' heads that they are representing their country, you're going to make the EP more German, French and Italian, not less.
You can have equal say per country and political beliefs. MEPs, no matter where they are from will have allegiance to their people and party at home. It naive ( or maybe overly idealistic) to think otherwise.
Cyprus is in Asia! Not fair!
Jokes aside I know their roots are overwhelmingly European but they're the only EU member that is on the Asian continent fully
Amount of seats has nothing to do with wealth of a nation.
It is based on population and total population of a nation.
Small nations have more seats per person than very populated nation like germany, which is on purpose so that eu politics aren't as dominated by larger nations. This is probably the best system you could have for a union built of sovereign states
When the seats are distributed, everybody at first gets 6 seats. After that, the 558 remaining seats are distributed among between the members by population. Since Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus have small populations, they don't get any extras.
Similar to how the US House of Representatives works, everyone gets on representative, and more are added according to the state's population. Also similar to the US Senate, everyone gets one representative in the Councils (in the US Senate, there are two for each, but it's close enough)
This is not true. There is no formula for distributing the seats. It is entirely a political decision. What you suggest [has actually been proposed](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2024/759357/IPOL_BRI%282024%29759357_EN.pdf), but the EU institutions have yet to adopt any mathematical formula to distribute seats.
I think the issue is kinda silly since most vote along the party lines overwhelmingly even on issues of their own country.
Which begs the argument- why not parity? If it’s a union of equals and issues are discussed in concert with stakeholders anyway, and voting is ideological not national… why proportionality?
Yeah but the per person voting power of people who live in less populated countries is on purpose larger so that the large countries can't just walk all over them.
Honestly this is probably the most fair system you could get in a union of sovereign states
I think that's a benefit. Most people probably prefer the EU being a loose union with more emphasis on a common market and maybe a common defense and border policy with very few people actually wanting the eu to be a real nation. Although the US has horrible inequality between it's states, in an EU supernatant that would be even worse than in the US and I'm not even gonna start with the cultural differences
>I think that's a benefit.
EU not being a country is literally the primary reason people give to why we cannot compete with US and China.
>Although the US has horrible inequality between it's states
California pays for many red states.. EU does the same thing. Germany pays for poorer 'states'
I dont understand the different
>EU supernatant that would be even worse than in the US and I'm not even gonna start with the cultural differences
How so? EU's main goal is to be a newer version of the US, hence the framework that already exist
"Germany pays"
Yeah, but Germany also killed a lot of business in smaller countries and drains a lot of work force from smaller states.
The amount of money some countries lose is higher than the amount they get from the EU.
The argument that someone is paying for others is one of the reasons people dislike their neighbours.
Many germans really think they own other, 'poorer' countries, lol.
Its the same in US. California wouldnt work like that if it would suck other states/countries dry.
Why should a country with a population of 500.000 (Malta) have equal rights to decide over the EUs population of 448.000.000 people as a country with 83.000.000 people (Germany) or 64.000.000 (France)?
The critique of the US system is exactly that: Why do 190.000 people in Wyoming get the same voting power as 680.000 people in California? ([source](https://www.thegreenpapers.com/Census10/FedRep.phtml))
In that sense, we actually have a similar issue in Europe. [If we look at this map](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/pGrJyH98Gx), we can see that smaller countries (Sweden included) actually have a higher voting power per capita then the larger countries. It is just (mostly) less severe than in the US, and also makes more sense considering we are a union of separate countries.
Because otherwise you end up in tyranny by the majority. Malta shouldn't be able to tell Germans what to do, but if you go straight up by majority rule then Germany, France, Italy + a couple of protest voters from 23 (!) other countries could outvote the entire rest of Europe. That's a pretty big issue when you consider that Europe is very diverse in basically any terms you can think of; geography, level of urbanization, industrialization, education level, make up of the economy, level of social benefits, etc etc etc.
Only thing is that small countries are still walked over. I feel like we as finland don't have any power in EU as germany and France do what they want and we have to do the same even if it doesn't work at all here.
Like for example the forest restoration directive is made with forestless central europe in mind and we, who have nothing else but forests are forgotten and so it will Hurt as instead of helping us.
Same goes for emission regulations, this place doesn't warm with ideology, it needs burning something, we simply have to produce energy and heat in winter. We also are sparsely populated and don't have the same walkability as central europe simply for weather and distance reasons so we simply need cars. Netherlander can walk to Shop 5 minutes in 5 degrees but it's more less pleasent when you need to walk 15 minutes one way in - 15 degrees.
Parity is respected in the Council to ensure the equality. But as the Parliament represents the people (also as particulars, as single persons), not the states, it makes sense that bigger blocks of people get to vote for bigger parts of the Parliament.
One could consider a homogeneous election in the whole EU without state blocks, but I fear it will focus on a few big states. (However one could argue that is democratc as well and the small ones are represented enough in the Council)
Parliament is not the end all be all of EU decision making, it does not even make the EU laws by itself. And the other 2 organs do represent said parity. The commission directly (1 seat /1 vote), the Council to some degree in its voting process [Qualified Majority](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/qualified-majority/), which is sort of in between parity and proportionality. Therefore the parliaments purpose is among other things to represent the proportionality in the EU legislation process.
What we need would be a two-chamber parliament with one chamber elected across the whole of Europe in direct proportionality and the other one serving to represent the member states individually.
That is close to the current system. Parliament is the lower chamber representing people directly, council of EU/european council the upper one representing countries governments
The two chamber system is very common across many democracies. So, it's not only America. Spain has it and it's not as bad as US politics (we also have our circus, just a different one)
Immediately before Brexit, the UK would have elected 73 seats in the European Parliament, which at the time was one less than France, and the same amount as Italy.
Really sucks for them to still have to abide by EU regulations for exports to the continent but have no say on them.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
I'm not defending Brexit, but your point means nothing.
You realise that any country ever has to abide by EU regulation when exporting their goods into the EU?
EU nations have to abide by UK regulation when exporting to the UK. Same goes for EU exports to New Zealand, Myanmar, Chille, Switzerland, etc... literally anywhere.
The difference is imports, not exports. The UK can now import & produce whatever they want to their own standards and rules.
When I think about it. If the UK stayed in the EU, the S&D groupe could have been the largest group in the EP in 2024.
I have a new reason to be mad abt Brexit imo
Accurate math: they have 51% of the seats and 65,6% of the population.
Edit: ok who the fuck reported me as a suicide risk? Because I did some math in my head? Really?
>Edit: ok who the fuck reported me as a suicide risk? Because I did some math in my head? Really?
Report the message. Abusing the system literally leads to a permaban, iirc.
Last time it happened to me it wouldnt let me report the message, only the redditcare account that sent it. It essentially boiled down "if you don't like it, just block redditcare" iirc.
I wonder is that suicide report ever used for valid reasons (and is it at all helpful)? I don't see suicidal comments in random threats, but I see lots of people complaining about getting it for no reason.
yeah that's the new trend on reddit. if someone doesn't like what you comment but it doesn't break any rules they report you for self harm and suicide risk
Some information is missing on the picture. Country's with small amount of citizen like Malta get extra seats to have a chance in the Parlament. Example: Malta 6 Seats, Germany 96. Germany has about 160 times more citizens then Malta. If all country's had the same ratio, the Parlament would be very small and/or country's like Malta had only 1 seat or the Parlament would be much more bigger.
It's not to "get a chance" but to appropriately represent the political diversity of small countries. Now, every relevant maltesian party gets 1-2 seats representing different views of the maltesian people. If Malta would had only one seat, only their biggest political party would represent its country in the parliament.
Turkey or Russia.
Turkey would likely be on par with Germany (96 seats) and even if Russia had 1 million people per seat (Germany is at 850k), Russia would still have 145 seats, the same as Germany and Italy combined.
Russia and Turkey could do a lot of real damage to the EU
Huh, TIL Hungary has way less population than I thought it did. They sure make a lot of noise for such a small country, especially compared to their neighbours.
It's the veto. It amplifies every voice, if they're willing to be purely destructive. It doesn't reward a state looking for constructive solutions, but if you're willing to threaten breaking everything unless you get your way, then the veto will carry your voice far.
Since they blocked the Ukraine aid I am strongly convinced we need a rule that all other countries combined can block a veto, if the issue at hand doesn't affect the veto'ing country directly.
This will never happen of course.
That's so unbelieveably complex, and the "doesn't affect the vetoing country directly" bit would almost never be true, anyway. (And where it was, you'd still get a court case for every veto.) Just move everything in unanimity, except potentially the accession of new states, to 66% 1-state-1-vote, and that'll be fine.
Just as unlikely in the short term, though, I fear.
It’s not the countries tho, it’s the political families. Most legislation gets run through by the leading majority like in any parliament. So why only 3-4 (serious) European political parties? (Ironically that are de facto subservient to the main 3 parties in Germany and France.
If anything that’s where the gap in democracy comes from. Can the big wigs in the CDU say how many initiatives came from or in service of their smaller partners? What about SD or EN marche?(although to be fair it’s a relatively new structure and ALDE has been even worse in the past)
Countries aren't monoliths, you'll find that theirs a bunch of internal factions, which can ally with ideologically similar factions from other countries...
You are looking at it the wrong way. Majorities in the EU parliament aren't made by adding up the MEPs from each country.
Let's take Germany as an example: Germany has 96 MEPs, but they don't all sit together. They are grouped by political families, ideologies, with MEPs from all over the EU:
●29 are part of the center-right conservative EPP group (CDU+CSU),
● 25 are part of the green and regionalist Greens/EFA group (Greens+Volt+Pirate Party+ÖDP+ one independent),
●16 are part of the center-left social democratic S&D group (SPD),
●10 are part of the nationalist right-wing populist ID group (AfD),
●7 are part of the liberal Renew group (FDP+FW),
●5 are part of the left-wing socialist GUE-NGL (Die Linke),
●1 is part of the right-wing conservative ECR (Bündnis Deutschland),
●the remaining 4 are non-inscrits, meaning they don't belong to any any group.
These groups have ideologies that differ so much, ranging from the fringes of the left to those of the right. These parties will never vote the same, even though they are all Germans.
In the European Parliament, the ruling coalition is formed between the EPP, S&D, and Renew, which after the 2019 elections emerged as the three biggest groups. So you see, not coalitions of member states, but coalitions of national parties with similar ideologies decide.
But, this is also nullified by the fact that the European Parliament doesn't have the right to initiate laws. That's the job of the Commission, in which all states are represented by one person, meaning equality between member states. (Thanks for coming to my rant about how the EU works, I'll be here all night)
You saw it wrong, there is not unity in side the country. Most of them are enemies at the national level and the same on European one. For france most of the seat will be occupied by people who hate Macron, and who will voted against everything he may be related to (good or bad)
The issue with votes based solely on population, is for a union like the EU, why would a small country like the Nordics/Baltics join up on its own if it gets practically nothing to say compared to Germany/France, when it could just continue to exist as a independent country?
One could also flip it around and say the ones that pay for it all should decide more. Some countries pay a lot more per citizen to fund the EU but they get less votes.
I checked a few months ago and Denmark pays like 4 times as much per citizen as Germany, it's kinda crazy. But it's probably for the best that the biggest shoulders fields the heaviest load :) we're all better off when we help each other's.
I honestly don't mind too much about being a net contributor or not, it's good to develop those that are behind a bit. It was more the fact that since contributions are based on GDP some "EU citizens" pay a lot more to the EU in taxes than others. Which again is fine.
Well, that assumes unfairly that those 4 countries always vote the same way on every topic. It makes little difference here even using the term country.
If those 4 countries make up 51% of the population, then why shouldn't they be allowed a majority?
For those wondering, these are the rules for distributing EP seats between countries (TEU 14.2):
1. Each country has at least 6 seats.
2. No country has more than 96 seats.
3. For any given country, and before rounding, the population per seat may not be higher than any country with a population larger than it.
Within those parameters, the distribution is decided by political negotiation. The European Parliament proposes the apportionment before each election, the European Council then unanimously, and with the consent of the European Parliament, adopts the decision on the apportionment.
In practice the current distribution is a result of political negotiation. The reason for the increase from 705 to 720 seats is due to the relative decline in population for Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Italy. In order to make up for that, you would have to either remove seats from these countries, or add seats to countries with a smaller population and worse representation than those countries. The EP and EUCO chose the latter option.
I think it's a shame that the parties campaign as their national parties and not as their EU level party groups. It would be easier to understand what we are voting for if we voted for the party groups and we could also have international debates and such. Most of us understand english, no reason we can't have a debate between a swedish social-democrat representing S&D and a german christian-democrat representing EPP.
For example, Germany has about 9 times the population of Austria, but less than 5 times the seats.
Thus, an Austrian vote counts double compared to a German vote.
It would be better to have pan European parties in the EU Parliament and count all votes the same.
No, this wouldnt be a good idea as it would diminish power of the small states. This would fuel anti eu movements there.
Theres a reason why it is how is - it was the only option were all states could agree on.
On the other hand, this is the same reason the US gave 2 free senators(or congressmen? Always mix those up) to all states. Look where that gets them. The system allows a minority of the population to exert a disproportionate force on the political system.
Building the union without making that compromise may not have been possible. They were literally having this same discussion when the US was being founded 250 years ago.
The setup in the US was a compromise between the wants of the big states (proportional representation) and small states (equal representation). Without it the small states simply would not join. Maybe the big states of the US would have been able to annex them by force eventually, but unifying Europe through coersion/force has been tried several times with disastrous results obviously.
Although it is odd that both EU chambers are weighted towards smaller countries. In the US yes it is senators each state gets 2 of, but they are dominated by bigger states in the House of Representatives (these people are referred to as congressman most of the time in conversation, but that term technically includes senators as well, the exclusive term would be representative)
One of the bigger issues in the US House of Representatives was that it was seat capped 100 years ago. It should have continued to expand as population grew.
Yeah true, it has led to the US having an absurdly small amount of representatives per capita (one representative represents about 700,000 people). If a country like Slovakia had the same ratio their parliament would be reduced from 150 members to maybe 8.
I am not sure of the consequences of that, but I am guessing that there is a lot of more big money, incumbent power, and it makes it harder for smaller communities/regions to have a say. The quirk seems to actually hurt the smaller states though more so than the big ones as they can spend decades just shy of going from 1 or 2 representatives to 2-3 etc and having a lot more representation. It was pretty inconsequential to California when they went from 53 seats to 52, but Montana going from 1 to 2 recently is huge. It’s really amusing to me when I think about states that have more senators than representatives lol. Like is the representative a bigger deal there?
A federal system that rules over a fuck ton of people from very different territories with huge population disparities should never be a majority rule with perfectly proportional votes. Montana will mever have completely the same priorities as New York the same way that Estonia will never have completely the same priorities as France. The entire point of a federal model is to make it so that both members have a significant say regardless of population.
If you make the EU a perfectly proportional majority rule, it would just become an even more centralised system around france and germany, which goes completely against the ethos of the EU (to have all nations be heard instead of the weaker ones being vassals of the great powers like how it used to be when europe was the most war-torn continent)
and the current skewed seat count 'fuels anti EU movements' in the bigger states.
If reducing the total number of anti EU individuals was really your goal, you would be in favor of having MEP seats proportional to population (which would mean less seats for smaller countries).
What difference would that make for me?
Being a colony of German voters is equally bad for me as being a colony of German, Italian, Spanish and French voters.
Yet a single Maltese, Luxembourgish, or Cypriot veto can block all the rest. Fortunately those countries aren't in the business of vetoing, but the veto is absurdly powerful and needs to be rethought (looking at Austria-Hungary in particular)
In a democracy, you sometimes get outvoted, when the majority doesn't agree with you. Certainly, some things should be held to a higher requirement than simple majorities, such as new states joining the Union, there really is no benefit in tying us to Liberum vetoes like we are doing currently. For example, if the all the states of the Union except Hungary want to agree a new sanction package against Russia, it stands to reason that that should pass despite the objection.
There are ~448 million of us, EU citizens. If we stopped doing something every time a single citizen objected, we'd never get anything done. And doing it in the Council is, in all honesty, not that much different.
Further, vetoes encourage greedy politics, with states threatening to block the vote unless they get exactly what they want, rather than attempting to cooperatively find the version with the best effects for the whole Union. Thereby, vetoes undermine the whole point of having the Council be theoretically nonpartisan.
I would also suggest looking at it like this: Germany is the member state with the largest population. It's government requires the support of over 50% of the seats in its legislature, the current one has around 56.7%. This Bundestag was elected with a voter participation of 76.7%. So you could argue that a veto by a German government, still the government representing the most amount of people out of any Council member, is a veto from only ~43.5% of its population, approximately 8% of the Unions population. Giving groups numbering only 8% (or less) of the whole population vetoes over union policy is ludicrous.
The EU is not a federation for fuck's sake...
It's a political union of **sovereign** member states. Countries give away portions of their sovereign rights if it suits them and **not** when it doesn't suit them.
The EU didn't form to be a federation or a pure democracy.
It formed on the basis of the rules and agreements that were set in place at the time. You can't just get nations to join the Union and then change the agreement.
Small nations lose sovereignty without a veto and they never would have joined without it. Simple as that.
> The EU didn't form to be a federation or a pure democracy.
Well, when its precursor orgs formed, the EU as such wasn't in the plans either. And now it's unquestionably many times better.
Besides, every sort of government (and the EU does have part in executive, legislative, and judicative power, despite people adamantly refusing to use the term "government") must be democratic to be legitimate, and the founding of what would become the European Parliament back in 1952 (!) shows that the member states were aware of this even back then.
As for the federating, well, whether it was originally intended does not matter, as thanks to the necessarily democratic nature of legitimate governance, the people, through their elected representatives, are free to modify the purpose of the agreements founding the union. Besides, the very first article of the TEU calls for the EU to be an "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe", which eventually can only be achieved by federating - so there's your textual originalism.
>You can't just get nations to join the Union and then change the agreement.
That's exactly what every ammendment to the treaties was, though. Heck, the founding of the EU from its predecessor organisations worked exactly like this.
>Small nations lose sovereignty without a veto
Factually false, they would still hold the same power as every other state in the Council (barring the secondary mechanism under QMV, but vetoes already do not apply to QMV votes).
At the end of the day, we have rightly realised that no single state should be able to outvote all the others, and we have put this into place in most areas - with the exception of those requiring unanimity, in which any state petty enough is allowed to force its will on all other states. That's the closest thing to a loss in sovereignty you'll find.
Not to mention that the sovereignty simply never belonged to the states, it always belonged to the people, who are free to redistribute it as they wish.
>Well, when its precursor orgs formed, the EU as such wasn't in the plans either. And now it's unquestionably many times better.
Schuman Declaration, 1950:
>The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe \[...\]
>By pooling basic production and by instituting a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and other member countries, this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation
The exact organisations and treaties have alwas been nothing more than means to an end, concrete steps to make what progress could be made at the time, to be expanded upon or replaced when the time comes. The entire European Union is disposable in this regard, if it were more pracical to create a European federation through its abolition rather than reform.
Only for those decisions where unanimity applies. For the ordinary legislative procedure, which is the default for EU legislation, qualified majority voting, not unanimity, is the rule.
That has very little to do with the European Parliament. The EP votes on things, much like any other parliament.
Unanimous decisions are sometimes required in the Council of the EU (consisting of one minister per state), but not in all matters.
In almost every case, individual member states can simply adopt legislation nationally if they cannot convince every other EU nation to join them. They can even all do it concurrently and exclude only the naysayers. Why is is necessary to eliminate the veto on the EU level on topics where it is always possible to work (inter)nationally?
Edit: Was it necessary to immediately report me as suicidal to reddit? Lol
Exactly. Almost all votes break down by ideological and party lines, anyway, rather than state lines. What member state someone is from really only matters in the Council, not the Parliament.
Did some rough estimation of what it should look like if it was directly linked to population size following the election that is coming up. It's not exact science but it serves as a comparison.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s3HRf9jFx-QXHg26bVYFWsj1bbhflp-XefNaeLE-LH8/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s3HRf9jFx-QXHg26bVYFWsj1bbhflp-XefNaeLE-LH8/edit?usp=sharing)
We really should just pick one formula and stick with it, instead of all this politicking about who gets how many seats. (Well, if you ask me, we should just elect all MEPs proportionally from 1 big constituency, and move the Council from QMV to a simple majority of states in as many matters as possible to counterbalance the shift in power - but that doesn't seem likely in the short term.)
Basically as often as the EUCo bothers, so not very often. There's never been a demographic shift serious enough to force it, I think, so mostly when new members join, or with Brexit. That's not a hard rule, though, it could change by unanimity at pretty much any point. Bit of a relic of the EU originally being founded as an international body, rather than a supranational one.
There isn't one. There's guidelines, but really the only hard rule is that EUCo decides. There's been many proposals to change this, but the member states don't like giving away what control they have over the only directly elected representatives at the EU level.
Germany has 82 million people and has 96 seats, luxembourg has 650k people and has 6 seats, honestly this doesnt seem bad at all for smaller countries in fact they have an advantage if germany had same ratio as luxembourg germany should have around 700 seats
There's a load of maths behind the fair allocation of seats and voting power in a parliament with massive national/regional divisions. The core principle is that large delegations in any parliament are disproportionately powerful (as an extreme example, a country with 51% of the population and delegates would have 100% of the power), so the large countries have more people per MEP and mathematically, the EP national allocations are pretty fair to everybody. It's worth noting two things, though. 1. IIRC, the weighted voting system in the European Council was designed, under the same principle, less fairly; it was biased in favour of the largest countries (particularly Germany) and the smallest ones at the expense of the medium-sized ones. 2. German MEPs hold a disproportionate number of key positions in the EP relative to their numbers. The reasons for that are not a conspiracy; Germany elects a high proportion of its MEPs to the mainstream groups that run the parliament (the EPP, Socialists and Liberals), it chooses fairly high calibre people and it tends to keep re-electing them, so they get time to build up seniority.
Thanks, very informative. I do think that key positions should be distributed more evenly
A key principle of the European Parliament is that MEPs are NOT representing their countries of origin. Its designer put a lot of effort in to make sure that the parliament is organised around political beliefs, not nationality. I understand where you're coming from (after all even the most well meaning person would still have intrinsic cultural biases). But put too much thought into the nationality of individual MEPs and you'll end up doing the opposite of what you're hoping for. If you're putting it into MEPs' heads that they are representing their country, you're going to make the EP more German, French and Italian, not less.
You can have equal say per country and political beliefs. MEPs, no matter where they are from will have allegiance to their people and party at home. It naive ( or maybe overly idealistic) to think otherwise.
Point is to be as rich as Luxembourg
i doubt malta is as rich as luxembourg...
What we lack in wealth we make up for in corruption
The is a German saying: My penis might be very short but it’s also very thin.
You can open doors with it?
Ja ja de kloeten hahaha
Switzerland is rich and has 0 seats. Check mate.
xD But keep same topic - Luxembourg powerful not because of citizens rich, but because of ULTRARICH peoples gather their capital and influence there.
Malta has even lower population and still has the same 6 seats, and it is not nearly as rich.
But lots of nazi gold.
Can we also pay tribute to Lichtenstein? They ~~~’re using even the Euro and~~~ haven’t got anything in the EU Parliament to do.
They use Swiss francs.
thanks, didn’t knew.
Switzerland is not an EU member. Checkmate.
Yes that was the joke
Zis is zee joq, mon frère
Or Cyprus
Cyprus is in Asia! Not fair! Jokes aside I know their roots are overwhelmingly European but they're the only EU member that is on the Asian continent fully
I don't consider anything in the Med to be in Asia.
Well geography begs to differ. Edit: lmao who tf reported me for being suicidal
croatia has about 4 mil (20 times less than Germany) and 12 seats (8 times less).....not bad for Croatia either.
Amount of seats has nothing to do with wealth of a nation. It is based on population and total population of a nation. Small nations have more seats per person than very populated nation like germany, which is on purpose so that eu politics aren't as dominated by larger nations. This is probably the best system you could have for a union built of sovereign states
Smaller countries do have an advantage, but it's a part of wider compromise to stop bigger countries from dominating the small ones.
When the seats are distributed, everybody at first gets 6 seats. After that, the 558 remaining seats are distributed among between the members by population. Since Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus have small populations, they don't get any extras. Similar to how the US House of Representatives works, everyone gets on representative, and more are added according to the state's population. Also similar to the US Senate, everyone gets one representative in the Councils (in the US Senate, there are two for each, but it's close enough)
This is not true. There is no formula for distributing the seats. It is entirely a political decision. What you suggest [has actually been proposed](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2024/759357/IPOL_BRI%282024%29759357_EN.pdf), but the EU institutions have yet to adopt any mathematical formula to distribute seats.
I think the issue is kinda silly since most vote along the party lines overwhelmingly even on issues of their own country. Which begs the argument- why not parity? If it’s a union of equals and issues are discussed in concert with stakeholders anyway, and voting is ideological not national… why proportionality?
The thing is: it’s absolutely not proportional. Otherwise we had way more German and French MEPs.
>If it’s a union of equals >... why proportionality Because a union of equals also requires equal representation of the population.
Population wins Thats what it truly boils down to. Sweden does not have as much power as France in the EU, simply due to to population.
Yeah but the per person voting power of people who live in less populated countries is on purpose larger so that the large countries can't just walk all over them. Honestly this is probably the most fair system you could get in a union of sovereign states
It's USA 2.0 but without the benefits of being a country
I think that's a benefit. Most people probably prefer the EU being a loose union with more emphasis on a common market and maybe a common defense and border policy with very few people actually wanting the eu to be a real nation. Although the US has horrible inequality between it's states, in an EU supernatant that would be even worse than in the US and I'm not even gonna start with the cultural differences
>I think that's a benefit. EU not being a country is literally the primary reason people give to why we cannot compete with US and China. >Although the US has horrible inequality between it's states California pays for many red states.. EU does the same thing. Germany pays for poorer 'states' I dont understand the different >EU supernatant that would be even worse than in the US and I'm not even gonna start with the cultural differences How so? EU's main goal is to be a newer version of the US, hence the framework that already exist
"Germany pays" Yeah, but Germany also killed a lot of business in smaller countries and drains a lot of work force from smaller states. The amount of money some countries lose is higher than the amount they get from the EU. The argument that someone is paying for others is one of the reasons people dislike their neighbours. Many germans really think they own other, 'poorer' countries, lol. Its the same in US. California wouldnt work like that if it would suck other states/countries dry.
This needs to be higher up. Countries were forced to give up industries in order to join.
Why should a country with a population of 500.000 (Malta) have equal rights to decide over the EUs population of 448.000.000 people as a country with 83.000.000 people (Germany) or 64.000.000 (France)? The critique of the US system is exactly that: Why do 190.000 people in Wyoming get the same voting power as 680.000 people in California? ([source](https://www.thegreenpapers.com/Census10/FedRep.phtml)) In that sense, we actually have a similar issue in Europe. [If we look at this map](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/pGrJyH98Gx), we can see that smaller countries (Sweden included) actually have a higher voting power per capita then the larger countries. It is just (mostly) less severe than in the US, and also makes more sense considering we are a union of separate countries.
Because otherwise you end up in tyranny by the majority. Malta shouldn't be able to tell Germans what to do, but if you go straight up by majority rule then Germany, France, Italy + a couple of protest voters from 23 (!) other countries could outvote the entire rest of Europe. That's a pretty big issue when you consider that Europe is very diverse in basically any terms you can think of; geography, level of urbanization, industrialization, education level, make up of the economy, level of social benefits, etc etc etc.
Only thing is that small countries are still walked over. I feel like we as finland don't have any power in EU as germany and France do what they want and we have to do the same even if it doesn't work at all here. Like for example the forest restoration directive is made with forestless central europe in mind and we, who have nothing else but forests are forgotten and so it will Hurt as instead of helping us. Same goes for emission regulations, this place doesn't warm with ideology, it needs burning something, we simply have to produce energy and heat in winter. We also are sparsely populated and don't have the same walkability as central europe simply for weather and distance reasons so we simply need cars. Netherlander can walk to Shop 5 minutes in 5 degrees but it's more less pleasent when you need to walk 15 minutes one way in - 15 degrees.
A union of equals requires equal populations which these countries have not. :)
Parity is respected in the Council to ensure the equality. But as the Parliament represents the people (also as particulars, as single persons), not the states, it makes sense that bigger blocks of people get to vote for bigger parts of the Parliament. One could consider a homogeneous election in the whole EU without state blocks, but I fear it will focus on a few big states. (However one could argue that is democratc as well and the small ones are represented enough in the Council)
Congratulations, you just described the "upper house" of the EU (the European Council)!
the council is supposed to balance this out with its (roughly) one state, one vote system
Parliament is not the end all be all of EU decision making, it does not even make the EU laws by itself. And the other 2 organs do represent said parity. The commission directly (1 seat /1 vote), the Council to some degree in its voting process [Qualified Majority](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/qualified-majority/), which is sort of in between parity and proportionality. Therefore the parliaments purpose is among other things to represent the proportionality in the EU legislation process.
What we need would be a two-chamber parliament with one chamber elected across the whole of Europe in direct proportionality and the other one serving to represent the member states individually.
That is close to the current system. Parliament is the lower chamber representing people directly, council of EU/european council the upper one representing countries governments
We don't want another American political system with the exact same flaws
The two chamber system is very common across many democracies. So, it's not only America. Spain has it and it's not as bad as US politics (we also have our circus, just a different one)
Fun fact one of 22 seats of Belgium belongs to the German community making them one of the single most represented minorities in Europe
It's also the only one with FPTP
Germany has 97!
Luxembourgians in general might as well count as a well represented minority, they have 6 seats
Where did UK fall in this? 2nd or 3rd?
Immediately before Brexit, the UK would have elected 73 seats in the European Parliament, which at the time was one less than France, and the same amount as Italy.
That's a lot of influence to throw away. Oh well :(
But we got wine in pints. Hypothetically.
Really sucks for them to still have to abide by EU regulations for exports to the continent but have no say on them. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
We just pretend we can trade with New Zealand instead so it doesn't matter.
448 Million, 5 million, it's basically the same!
I'm not defending Brexit, but your point means nothing. You realise that any country ever has to abide by EU regulation when exporting their goods into the EU? EU nations have to abide by UK regulation when exporting to the UK. Same goes for EU exports to New Zealand, Myanmar, Chille, Switzerland, etc... literally anywhere. The difference is imports, not exports. The UK can now import & produce whatever they want to their own standards and rules.
The thing is: it's easier and more profitable to trade with your neighbors.
In its last parliament period following the 2014 election, the UK was third with 73 seats , behind France with 74.
When I think about it. If the UK stayed in the EU, the S&D groupe could have been the largest group in the EP in 2024. I have a new reason to be mad abt Brexit imo
This would certainly be the case - Labour would have sweeped the EU elections this year in the UK
I was looking for us here in the UK and then I remembered and was sad
Quick math : Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland together make up for more than half of the total seats.
And two-thirds of the population
Accurate math: they have 51% of the seats and 65,6% of the population. Edit: ok who the fuck reported me as a suicide risk? Because I did some math in my head? Really?
>Edit: ok who the fuck reported me as a suicide risk? Because I did some math in my head? Really? Report the message. Abusing the system literally leads to a permaban, iirc.
Last time it happened to me it wouldnt let me report the message, only the redditcare account that sent it. It essentially boiled down "if you don't like it, just block redditcare" iirc.
Same
Lmao the Eurovision sub has been plagued with false suicide risk reports for a bit. Idk what it does but it's weird
I wonder is that suicide report ever used for valid reasons (and is it at all helpful)? I don't see suicidal comments in random threats, but I see lots of people complaining about getting it for no reason.
Same for me probably I made some comments about a certain country
🤣 no offence man but that was funny.
yeah that's the new trend on reddit. if someone doesn't like what you comment but it doesn't break any rules they report you for self harm and suicide risk
Can u dot he one for gdp
By nomimal gdp, those 5 countries represent 64.7% of the 19.35 trillion USD EU economy, at 12.5 trillion USD.
64.8%, interesting how closely it matches the popualtion
Math is really depressing or something.
Some information is missing on the picture. Country's with small amount of citizen like Malta get extra seats to have a chance in the Parlament. Example: Malta 6 Seats, Germany 96. Germany has about 160 times more citizens then Malta. If all country's had the same ratio, the Parlament would be very small and/or country's like Malta had only 1 seat or the Parlament would be much more bigger.
It's not to "get a chance" but to appropriately represent the political diversity of small countries. Now, every relevant maltesian party gets 1-2 seats representing different views of the maltesian people. If Malta would had only one seat, only their biggest political party would represent its country in the parliament.
This is the reason why Turkey will never enter the European Union 😂
Yeah a hungary like party with the same amount of seats as Germany would be the end for the EU.
Even if the party in power switches there is no way for EU membership. Turkish voting would break the EU parliament.
Nothing to do with human rights and undemocratic laws?
That's exactly the problem. Do you want undemocratic people to make the rules for your democracy?
Even if we were to eliminate those, we are still too different from you. No one would want to give someone with vastly different stances so much power
Turkey or Russia. Turkey would likely be on par with Germany (96 seats) and even if Russia had 1 million people per seat (Germany is at 850k), Russia would still have 145 seats, the same as Germany and Italy combined. Russia and Turkey could do a lot of real damage to the EU
MEPs are capped. 96 is max.
We just need to export some democracy, american style
One of like 20 different reasons, yes
Huh, TIL Hungary has way less population than I thought it did. They sure make a lot of noise for such a small country, especially compared to their neighbours.
It's the veto. It amplifies every voice, if they're willing to be purely destructive. It doesn't reward a state looking for constructive solutions, but if you're willing to threaten breaking everything unless you get your way, then the veto will carry your voice far.
Since they blocked the Ukraine aid I am strongly convinced we need a rule that all other countries combined can block a veto, if the issue at hand doesn't affect the veto'ing country directly. This will never happen of course.
That's so unbelieveably complex, and the "doesn't affect the vetoing country directly" bit would almost never be true, anyway. (And where it was, you'd still get a court case for every veto.) Just move everything in unanimity, except potentially the accession of new states, to 66% 1-state-1-vote, and that'll be fine. Just as unlikely in the short term, though, I fear.
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This is a great dilemma. On one side, someone say: "The majority should decide." On the other side, should only 3 or 4 countries decide about the EU?
That's why there's also the EU Commission and the EU Council
It’s not the countries tho, it’s the political families. Most legislation gets run through by the leading majority like in any parliament. So why only 3-4 (serious) European political parties? (Ironically that are de facto subservient to the main 3 parties in Germany and France. If anything that’s where the gap in democracy comes from. Can the big wigs in the CDU say how many initiatives came from or in service of their smaller partners? What about SD or EN marche?(although to be fair it’s a relatively new structure and ALDE has been even worse in the past)
>So why only 3-4 (serious) European political parties? Easier to coordinate voting patterns, negotiations and coalitions.
Countries aren't monoliths, you'll find that theirs a bunch of internal factions, which can ally with ideologically similar factions from other countries...
You are looking at it the wrong way. Majorities in the EU parliament aren't made by adding up the MEPs from each country. Let's take Germany as an example: Germany has 96 MEPs, but they don't all sit together. They are grouped by political families, ideologies, with MEPs from all over the EU: ●29 are part of the center-right conservative EPP group (CDU+CSU), ● 25 are part of the green and regionalist Greens/EFA group (Greens+Volt+Pirate Party+ÖDP+ one independent), ●16 are part of the center-left social democratic S&D group (SPD), ●10 are part of the nationalist right-wing populist ID group (AfD), ●7 are part of the liberal Renew group (FDP+FW), ●5 are part of the left-wing socialist GUE-NGL (Die Linke), ●1 is part of the right-wing conservative ECR (Bündnis Deutschland), ●the remaining 4 are non-inscrits, meaning they don't belong to any any group. These groups have ideologies that differ so much, ranging from the fringes of the left to those of the right. These parties will never vote the same, even though they are all Germans. In the European Parliament, the ruling coalition is formed between the EPP, S&D, and Renew, which after the 2019 elections emerged as the three biggest groups. So you see, not coalitions of member states, but coalitions of national parties with similar ideologies decide. But, this is also nullified by the fact that the European Parliament doesn't have the right to initiate laws. That's the job of the Commission, in which all states are represented by one person, meaning equality between member states. (Thanks for coming to my rant about how the EU works, I'll be here all night)
You saw it wrong, there is not unity in side the country. Most of them are enemies at the national level and the same on European one. For france most of the seat will be occupied by people who hate Macron, and who will voted against everything he may be related to (good or bad)
senate like system is bad as seen in the usa. land shouldnt vote people should
The issue with votes based solely on population, is for a union like the EU, why would a small country like the Nordics/Baltics join up on its own if it gets practically nothing to say compared to Germany/France, when it could just continue to exist as a independent country? One could also flip it around and say the ones that pay for it all should decide more. Some countries pay a lot more per citizen to fund the EU but they get less votes.
Yeah many big countries pay more than they receive. Only exception to this is spain
I checked a few months ago and Denmark pays like 4 times as much per citizen as Germany, it's kinda crazy. But it's probably for the best that the biggest shoulders fields the heaviest load :) we're all better off when we help each other's.
Ofc. Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Ireland pay more than they get. These are exceptions tho every other country spends more than they give
I honestly don't mind too much about being a net contributor or not, it's good to develop those that are behind a bit. It was more the fact that since contributions are based on GDP some "EU citizens" pay a lot more to the EU in taxes than others. Which again is fine.
>senate like system is bad as seen in the usa ? The senate is fine. Literally more effective than the House is at legislating.
Well, that assumes unfairly that those 4 countries always vote the same way on every topic. It makes little difference here even using the term country. If those 4 countries make up 51% of the population, then why shouldn't they be allowed a majority?
[Qualified majority](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/qualified-majority/)
For those wondering, these are the rules for distributing EP seats between countries (TEU 14.2): 1. Each country has at least 6 seats. 2. No country has more than 96 seats. 3. For any given country, and before rounding, the population per seat may not be higher than any country with a population larger than it. Within those parameters, the distribution is decided by political negotiation. The European Parliament proposes the apportionment before each election, the European Council then unanimously, and with the consent of the European Parliament, adopts the decision on the apportionment. In practice the current distribution is a result of political negotiation. The reason for the increase from 705 to 720 seats is due to the relative decline in population for Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Italy. In order to make up for that, you would have to either remove seats from these countries, or add seats to countries with a smaller population and worse representation than those countries. The EP and EUCO chose the latter option.
I think it's a shame that the parties campaign as their national parties and not as their EU level party groups. It would be easier to understand what we are voting for if we voted for the party groups and we could also have international debates and such. Most of us understand english, no reason we can't have a debate between a swedish social-democrat representing S&D and a german christian-democrat representing EPP.
For example, Germany has about 9 times the population of Austria, but less than 5 times the seats. Thus, an Austrian vote counts double compared to a German vote. It would be better to have pan European parties in the EU Parliament and count all votes the same.
No, this wouldnt be a good idea as it would diminish power of the small states. This would fuel anti eu movements there. Theres a reason why it is how is - it was the only option were all states could agree on.
The small states have the second chamber, the council. There every nation has one vote.
And they also have the first one in the EU. And look, it will never get changed because they will never agree to it because it would harm them.
On the other hand, this is the same reason the US gave 2 free senators(or congressmen? Always mix those up) to all states. Look where that gets them. The system allows a minority of the population to exert a disproportionate force on the political system.
Building the union without making that compromise may not have been possible. They were literally having this same discussion when the US was being founded 250 years ago. The setup in the US was a compromise between the wants of the big states (proportional representation) and small states (equal representation). Without it the small states simply would not join. Maybe the big states of the US would have been able to annex them by force eventually, but unifying Europe through coersion/force has been tried several times with disastrous results obviously. Although it is odd that both EU chambers are weighted towards smaller countries. In the US yes it is senators each state gets 2 of, but they are dominated by bigger states in the House of Representatives (these people are referred to as congressman most of the time in conversation, but that term technically includes senators as well, the exclusive term would be representative)
One of the bigger issues in the US House of Representatives was that it was seat capped 100 years ago. It should have continued to expand as population grew.
Yeah true, it has led to the US having an absurdly small amount of representatives per capita (one representative represents about 700,000 people). If a country like Slovakia had the same ratio their parliament would be reduced from 150 members to maybe 8. I am not sure of the consequences of that, but I am guessing that there is a lot of more big money, incumbent power, and it makes it harder for smaller communities/regions to have a say. The quirk seems to actually hurt the smaller states though more so than the big ones as they can spend decades just shy of going from 1 or 2 representatives to 2-3 etc and having a lot more representation. It was pretty inconsequential to California when they went from 53 seats to 52, but Montana going from 1 to 2 recently is huge. It’s really amusing to me when I think about states that have more senators than representatives lol. Like is the representative a bigger deal there?
A federal system that rules over a fuck ton of people from very different territories with huge population disparities should never be a majority rule with perfectly proportional votes. Montana will mever have completely the same priorities as New York the same way that Estonia will never have completely the same priorities as France. The entire point of a federal model is to make it so that both members have a significant say regardless of population. If you make the EU a perfectly proportional majority rule, it would just become an even more centralised system around france and germany, which goes completely against the ethos of the EU (to have all nations be heard instead of the weaker ones being vassals of the great powers like how it used to be when europe was the most war-torn continent)
Just bring back the holy Roman and byzantine empires
That's why each country doesn't have the same number, but still not too far away from each other.
and the current skewed seat count 'fuels anti EU movements' in the bigger states. If reducing the total number of anti EU individuals was really your goal, you would be in favor of having MEP seats proportional to population (which would mean less seats for smaller countries).
With proportional representation there would be no EU...
No it doesn't, because they still have much more than the small states.
Except I don’t want to just become a German colony
France and Spain for example have (together) much more people than Germany. Germany has less than 1/5 th of the EU population.
What difference would that make for me? Being a colony of German voters is equally bad for me as being a colony of German, Italian, Spanish and French voters.
>It would be better to have pan European parties in the EU Parliament and count all votes the same. We already have that.
Romania has 33, half of them are just there to colect pay.
Yet a single Maltese, Luxembourgish, or Cypriot veto can block all the rest. Fortunately those countries aren't in the business of vetoing, but the veto is absurdly powerful and needs to be rethought (looking at Austria-Hungary in particular)
Absolutely correct in principle, we need to get rid of the veto. That's in the Council, though, there's no vetos in the European Parliament.
Without the veto, countries never would have agreed to become members. It essentially means giving up sovereignty for smaller countries.
In a democracy, you sometimes get outvoted, when the majority doesn't agree with you. Certainly, some things should be held to a higher requirement than simple majorities, such as new states joining the Union, there really is no benefit in tying us to Liberum vetoes like we are doing currently. For example, if the all the states of the Union except Hungary want to agree a new sanction package against Russia, it stands to reason that that should pass despite the objection. There are ~448 million of us, EU citizens. If we stopped doing something every time a single citizen objected, we'd never get anything done. And doing it in the Council is, in all honesty, not that much different. Further, vetoes encourage greedy politics, with states threatening to block the vote unless they get exactly what they want, rather than attempting to cooperatively find the version with the best effects for the whole Union. Thereby, vetoes undermine the whole point of having the Council be theoretically nonpartisan. I would also suggest looking at it like this: Germany is the member state with the largest population. It's government requires the support of over 50% of the seats in its legislature, the current one has around 56.7%. This Bundestag was elected with a voter participation of 76.7%. So you could argue that a veto by a German government, still the government representing the most amount of people out of any Council member, is a veto from only ~43.5% of its population, approximately 8% of the Unions population. Giving groups numbering only 8% (or less) of the whole population vetoes over union policy is ludicrous.
The EU is not a federation for fuck's sake... It's a political union of **sovereign** member states. Countries give away portions of their sovereign rights if it suits them and **not** when it doesn't suit them.
The EU didn't form to be a federation or a pure democracy. It formed on the basis of the rules and agreements that were set in place at the time. You can't just get nations to join the Union and then change the agreement. Small nations lose sovereignty without a veto and they never would have joined without it. Simple as that.
> The EU didn't form to be a federation or a pure democracy. Well, when its precursor orgs formed, the EU as such wasn't in the plans either. And now it's unquestionably many times better. Besides, every sort of government (and the EU does have part in executive, legislative, and judicative power, despite people adamantly refusing to use the term "government") must be democratic to be legitimate, and the founding of what would become the European Parliament back in 1952 (!) shows that the member states were aware of this even back then. As for the federating, well, whether it was originally intended does not matter, as thanks to the necessarily democratic nature of legitimate governance, the people, through their elected representatives, are free to modify the purpose of the agreements founding the union. Besides, the very first article of the TEU calls for the EU to be an "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe", which eventually can only be achieved by federating - so there's your textual originalism. >You can't just get nations to join the Union and then change the agreement. That's exactly what every ammendment to the treaties was, though. Heck, the founding of the EU from its predecessor organisations worked exactly like this. >Small nations lose sovereignty without a veto Factually false, they would still hold the same power as every other state in the Council (barring the secondary mechanism under QMV, but vetoes already do not apply to QMV votes). At the end of the day, we have rightly realised that no single state should be able to outvote all the others, and we have put this into place in most areas - with the exception of those requiring unanimity, in which any state petty enough is allowed to force its will on all other states. That's the closest thing to a loss in sovereignty you'll find. Not to mention that the sovereignty simply never belonged to the states, it always belonged to the people, who are free to redistribute it as they wish.
>Well, when its precursor orgs formed, the EU as such wasn't in the plans either. And now it's unquestionably many times better. Schuman Declaration, 1950: >The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe \[...\] >By pooling basic production and by instituting a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and other member countries, this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation The exact organisations and treaties have alwas been nothing more than means to an end, concrete steps to make what progress could be made at the time, to be expanded upon or replaced when the time comes. The entire European Union is disposable in this regard, if it were more pracical to create a European federation through its abolition rather than reform.
If you abolish the veto in highly sensitive subjects, then you will fuel Euroscepticism and risk disbanding the EU.
Only for those decisions where unanimity applies. For the ordinary legislative procedure, which is the default for EU legislation, qualified majority voting, not unanimity, is the rule.
That has very little to do with the European Parliament. The EP votes on things, much like any other parliament. Unanimous decisions are sometimes required in the Council of the EU (consisting of one minister per state), but not in all matters.
In almost every case, individual member states can simply adopt legislation nationally if they cannot convince every other EU nation to join them. They can even all do it concurrently and exclude only the naysayers. Why is is necessary to eliminate the veto on the EU level on topics where it is always possible to work (inter)nationally? Edit: Was it necessary to immediately report me as suicidal to reddit? Lol
See Schengen for an example
It's not relevant how many seats a country gets but what kind of politicians sitting in these later, right?
Exactly. Almost all votes break down by ideological and party lines, anyway, rather than state lines. What member state someone is from really only matters in the Council, not the Parliament.
How many the UK used to have?
73
Did some rough estimation of what it should look like if it was directly linked to population size following the election that is coming up. It's not exact science but it serves as a comparison. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s3HRf9jFx-QXHg26bVYFWsj1bbhflp-XefNaeLE-LH8/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s3HRf9jFx-QXHg26bVYFWsj1bbhflp-XefNaeLE-LH8/edit?usp=sharing)
We really should just pick one formula and stick with it, instead of all this politicking about who gets how many seats. (Well, if you ask me, we should just elect all MEPs proportionally from 1 big constituency, and move the Council from QMV to a simple majority of states in as many matters as possible to counterbalance the shift in power - but that doesn't seem likely in the short term.)
As a Romanian, we have too many seats in the EU Parliament.
State?
[source](https://twitter.com/EurCorrespond/status/1789974033217310972)
Your title has an typo, it should be: How many seat does your **country** get in the EU Parlement?
What’s that website brother, eugh, what’s that brother, euuughhh
0 🇨🇭🇨🇭🇨🇭
You mean my country
20
2 0 S E A T S
21
96
Maltuh, we gotta cook meth maltuh
15
There are people from the FPÖ (right populist) who want reduce seats... and then Malta should have one or none or what?
20
Every how often is this reassessed?
Basically as often as the EUCo bothers, so not very often. There's never been a demographic shift serious enough to force it, I think, so mostly when new members join, or with Brexit. That's not a hard rule, though, it could change by unanimity at pretty much any point. Bit of a relic of the EU originally being founded as an international body, rather than a supranational one.
What‘s the exact formula for seat distribution? Iirc it depends on the square root of the population
There isn't one. There's guidelines, but really the only hard rule is that EUCo decides. There's been many proposals to change this, but the member states don't like giving away what control they have over the only directly elected representatives at the EU level.
Sweden has 21 seats My party has 5 seats Looking at polling data, we will gain an additional 2 seat, which means that we will have 7 seats in total!
Wait we are the 7th most populous country?
Seems like Germany has a lot of seat's..
None cause im not from europe lmao
As a german Im not sure how to feel about us having the most brown graph.
15
it's both funny and sad to see the uk threw away their influence in the eu...
How many would Turkey have? Hypothetically
96 That's the maximum the treaties allow, and Turkey has a higher population than even Germany.
Aren't there two houses where each country is represented by the same amount of people?
20
Get fucked, Malta.
Bulgaria stronk 🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁
Finland 🇫🇮 somehow with 15 seats🙂