Article – Infographic: how many seats does each country get in in the European Parliament?

Distribution of seats: no losers

The redistribution of seats ensures that no EU country lost any seats, while some gained from one to five seats to redress underrepresentation in light of demographic changes.

The seat distribution takes into account the population of member states and follows the principle of degressive proportionality. That means that countries that are smaller in terms of population should have fewer MEPs than bigger countries. At the same time, MEPs from larger countries should represent more people than MEPs from smaller countries. In this way, smaller countries have a relatively stronger presence in Parliament.