Abstract:

The principle of proportional allocation was introduced in 2007 as a legal rule in the Lisbon Treaty. According to this rule, the seats in the European Parliament are to be distributed among the member states in a degressively proportional way. Although the treaty was ratified by all states as long ago in 2009, no allocation has been in compliance with this regulation. What’s more no consensus has been reached as regards a general, repetitive method underlying such allocation. The proposal of allocation for the 2019-2024 term as a political compromise instead of a result of applying a general algorithm complies with the legal requirements from 2007. One can also note that since 1979, i.e. from the first term of the European Parliament, the allocations for three consecutive terms was degressively proportional, although such a rule was not legally binding. In addition, those terms were characterized by the same numbers describing the minimal and maximal numbers of representatives of the least and most populated countries, i.e. similarly as current boundary conditions of allocations. Hence, one can study the similarities and differences of solutions proposed as a result of political consensus that was reached forty years ago. In this paper, the basic differences of interpretation of degressive proportionality by politicians responsible for the composition of the European Parliament in 1979 and 2019 will be presented, based on the numerical analysis of sets of all feasible solutions.