EU Parliament

EU Parliament in Brussels (Photo: European Parliament)

The European Parliament is the assembly of the representatives of the close to 500 million Union citizens. Since 1979 they have been elected by direct universal voting every five years.

At the moment, the European Parliament has a total of 785 members distributed between Member States according to the sizes of their populations accordinbg to a principle of "degressive proportionality". 

Notes

Future

The Lisbon Treaty will remove the distinction between compulsory and non-compulsory exdenditure, thus giving the European Parliament the influence on all budgetary categories.  

The European Parliament will also have greater influence in a greater number of areas as the co-decision procedure will be applied in more areas - now called the "ordinary legislative procedure".

From 2009 the seats in the European Parliament will be distributed according to the formalised principle of "degressive proportionality" securing each member state at least 6 seats and max. 96 in a parliament of 751 members. The Lisbon Treaty will bring the number down to 751 from 2009 on.

Links

European Parliament website http://www.europarl.europa.eu/