European Parliament constituency
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "European_Parliament_constituency".

European Union

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of the European Union

Treaties Rome Maastricht (Pillars) Amsterdam Nice Lisbon Institutions Commission President José Manuel Barroso Barroso Commission Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering MEPs (2004-09 term Council Presidency: Slovenia (Dimitrij Rupel) High Representative Voting European Council Other & Future Institutions Court of Justice Court of Auditors Central Bank Elections Last election (2004) 2007 by-election Next election (2009) Constituencies Parties Parliamentary groups Related topics States Enlargement Foreign relations Law EMU Other bodies Agencies

Other countries · Atlas  Politics Portal view • talk •

In six European Union Member States (Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom), the national territory is divided into a number of constituencies for European elections. In the remaining Member States the whole country forms a single electoral area. In Germany political parties are entitled to present lists of candidates either at Länder or national level.

Currently, all member states choose to hold elections to the European Parliament using various forms of proportional representation.

The population of constituencies varies widely across the union. Currently, the German speaking community of Belgium are the most represented in the EU Parliament with one seat for their 71,000 population, while the people of Sardinia and Sicily are the least represented, with only one seat per 943,000 people.

The number of seats per constituency varies from 1 in the German speaking community of Belgium, to 23 in the north-west region of Italy. When counting countries without specific subdivisions as single constituencies for comparison, Germany has the most seats — 99 seats.

Belgium

European Parliament election, 2004 (Belgium) - constituencies

France

European Parliament election, 2004 (France) - constituencies

Ireland

European Parliament election, 2004 (Ireland) - constituencies

Italy

European Parliament election, 2004 (Italy) - constituencies

Poland

European Parliament election, 2004 (Poland) - constituencies

United Kingdom

European Parliament election, 2004 (United Kingdom) - constituencies

Comparison with national constituencies

European Parliament election, 2004 — histogram of constituency sizes

Member State	Seats	Population	per Seat
Germany	99	82,000,000	828,000
France	78	62,700,000	803,000
United Kingdom	78	58,700,000	753,000
Italy	78	57,000,000	731,000
Spain	54	43,000,000	796,000
Poland	54	38,000,000	700,000
Netherlands	27	16,000,000	590,000
Greece	24	11,000,000	458,000
Portugal	24	10,500,000	437,000
Czech Republic	24	10,200,000	425,000
Belgium	24	10,100,000	420,000
Hungary	24	10,000,000	416,000
Sweden	19	9,000,000	473,000
Austria	18	8,200,000	455,000
Denmark	14	5,400,000	385,000
Slovakia	14	5,300,000	378,000
Finland	14	5,200,000	370,000
Ireland	13	3,900,000	300,000
Lithuania	13	3,600,000	277,000
Latvia	9	2,300,000	255,000
Slovenia	7	2,000,000	285,000
Estonia	6	1,300,000	216,000
Cyprus	6	780,000	130,000
Luxembourg	6	440,000	73,000
Malta	5	400,000	80,000

Full list