MEPs ask governments to avoid horse-trading over seats

MEPs have called on national governments to approve a new system for sharing out the number of seats in the European Parliament and avoid unseemly horse-trading.

On Tuesday (2 October) the Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee approved a system to allocate 750 seats between the 27 member states for 2009-14 with 17 votes for and five against.

Speaking after the vote, Romanian centre-left MEP Adrian Severin, one of two members who devised the system, urged governments to accept the system as part of the package on a new reform treaty due to be agreed by EU leaders on 18-19 October.

Responding to a threat from Emma Bonino, the Italian European affairs minister and a former MEP, to veto the proposal because it would give Italy 72 MEPs, fewer than the UK and France, Severin said: "This rhetorical war is not much use in building a real European spirit."

The system of distribution approved by the committee shares out the 750 seats for the 2009 legislature according to the principle of "degressive proportionality". Under this principle, which seeks to boost representation of smaller member states in the Parliament, the bigger the member state, the higher the number of constituents an MEP represents.

The committee rejected a number of changes to the system including a bid from German centre-right MEPs to delay the new system until 2014, when a new system of voting in the Council of Ministers enters into force, and to give bigger countries a higher share of MEPs. It also threw out attempts by Italian, Irish and Finnish MEPs to secure more MEPs for their countries than they have under the approach proposed by Severin and French centre-right MEP Alain Lamassoure.

The system has to be approved at a plenary meeting of the Parliament on 11 October. MEPs hope that the approach will be supported by a large majority to prevent EU leaders tinkering with the share-out of seats.

"If the European Parliament votes a big enough majority, the hot potato will go cold so the Council will be able to swallow it," said Lamassoure.

MEPs have called on national governments to approve a new system for sharing out the number of seats in the European Parliament and avoid unseemly horse-trading.