Composition of the Chamber of Deputies

Chamber of Deputies is a constitutional and legislative body at the federal level in European Union (European Federation). It consists of 645 deputies. It is elected based on the proportional electoral law, wherein each Member State shall create a single constituency. In the Constitution has been legally sanctioned principle of degressive proportional distribution of seats in the Chamber of Deputies . The Constitution says:

Article 80

    (1) The Chamber of Deputies shall be composed of 645 Deputies.

    (2) Elections to the Chamber of Deputies shall be universal, equal, direct and proportional and shall be conducted by secret ballot. If, no later than on the day of vote, he has attained 18 years of age, any citizen of the Union, shall have the right to vote for the  representatives to the Chamber of Deputies.

    (3) Each Member State constitutes an electoral constituency.

    (4) The number of representatives per each Member State is set out in the European supplementary law, in proportion to population. Necessary adjustments are made in the year before the election, so that no Member State had no less than 3 and not more than 96 seats.

 

 

The text of the Constitution of the Federation of European

As a result, you can not arbitrarily determine the number of seats for each Member State because European laws are limited in this respect, clearly sounding provisions of the Constitution. In Article 80, paragraph 4 have been fixed boundary conditions under which no Member State can have fewer than 3 deputies and not more than 96 deputies. The main purpose of establishing such conditions for the allocation of seats in the Chamber of Deputies aims to make the smallest reduction of the large Member States, while ensuring that less populated representatives of the Member States the right in the Chamber of Deputies. On the basis of such rules falls to the Germans 73 seats, France 60 seats and Malta, Iceland and Luxembourg each have 3 seats.

Members per Member State

Rank	Member State	Population	Number of Seats
1	Germany	81285000	73
2	France	67087000	60
3	United Kingom	64800000	59
4	Italy	60725000	55
5	Spain	47705000	44
6	Ukraine	42813557	40
7	Poland	38484000	36
8	Romania	19942642	20
9	Netherlands	16924000	18
10	Belgium	11250659	13
11	Greece	10846979	12
12	Czech Republic	10537818	12
13	Portugal	10374822	12
14	Hungary	9849000	11
15	Sweden	9816666	11
16	Belarus	9485300	11
17	Austria	8602112	10
18	Switzerland	8279700	10
19	Bulgaria	7202198	9
20	Serbia	7114393	9
21	Denmark	5678348	8
22	Finland	5489639	8
23	Slovakia	5421349	8
24	Norway	5189435	7
25	Ireland	4635400	7
26	Croatia	4225316	7
27	Bosnia and Herzegovina	3791622	6
28	Georgia	3729500	6
29	Moldova	3555200	6
30	Armenia	3005500	6
31	Lithuania	2900787	5
32	Albania	2893005	5
33	Macedonia	2069172	5
34	Slovenia	2068299	5
35	Latvia	1978300	5
36	Kosovo	1827231	5
37	Estonia	1313271	4
38	Cyprus	858000	4
39	Montenegro	621207	4
40	Luxembourg	562958	3
41	Malta	445426	3
42	Iceland	330610	3
	Totals	605715421	645

    

The provision of Article 80 of the Constitution introduces a fair distribution degressively proportional seats in parliament, according to this principle more populated country can not have a smaller representation of the less populated. Additionally provided is the principle of the relative proportionality, which is that the larger the Member State, the more citizens represents his deputy.

 

            It should be emphasized that the use of pure principle of proportionality in the allocation of seats in the Chamber of Deputies would pose great disparities and injustices. If we assume round down received proportion that Iceland, Malta and Luxembourg did not receive a single mandate, Germany would have their 86 and France 71. If they wish to provide Iceland, Malta and Luxembourg at least one representative, then Germany would receive no less than 245 seats and France has 202 seats in the parliament consisting of at least 1832 deputies. This situation is not acceptable for organizational reasons. A large number of collective bodies hinders the daily performance of their duties, and at least the minimum representation of each member of the community seems to be necessary.

 

For this reason, it proposed in the Constitution another solution, which was named regressive proportionality.