2023-09-23 05:28:37
The EU Parliament will grow by 15 seats following the upcoming European elections. On Friday, the European Council adopted the expansion that the people’s representatives had previously initiated. The Council explained that the move takes into account the “demographic changes in the EU member states”. In the coming legislative period, 720 members will be represented in the European Parliament. Austria will also get an additional seat.
Spain, France and the Netherlands will each receive two additional seats in the EU Parliament to be elected in the 2024 European elections. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland will each get an additional seat. According to the EU Treaty, the European Parliament may have a maximum of 750 seats, with the exception of the President of the Parliament.
The seats are distributed according to a calculation that takes into account changes in the population, but also slightly overrepresents the smallest EU member states. Germany, as the most populous EU member state, is already entitled to the maximum permitted number of 96 parliamentary seats.
Since Great Britain left the European Union, only 705 seats in the EU Parliament have been filled. 19 of these are occupied by Austrians (Neos:1, Greens:3, FPÖ:3, SPÖ:5, ÖVP:7).
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