Geography of representation in the 2024 European parliamentary elections

Abstract

Modern democratic political systems are hardly conceivable without political representation. This also applies to the European Union, a unique international organisation with a directly elected and fully-fledged assembly representing citizens of the EU Member States. Because geographical factors are central to the operation of almost all electoral systems and the European Parliament is the first transnational assembly based on the Member States representation, the paper explores the geography of representation in European Parliamentary election. The Member States representation in the European Parliament may be degressively proportional, which implies malapportionment of the European Parliamentary seats across the Member States. The study aims to quantify malapportionment in European elections, examining both the European Parliament level (using the adaptation of Loosemore and Hanby’s distortion index) and the Member States level (employing the advantage ratio and representation profile). It concludes that European political elites have deliberately created a system of EU Member States representation in which the geography of representation is a highly distorted reflection of the underlying geography of voting, with the aim of ensuring greater representation for less populous Member States and preventing excessive representation for Germany and other most populous Member States (i.e., deliberate degressive proportional representation). Specifically, malapportionment has been just below 15 % of the total seats, with the five most populous member states being underrepresented and the remaining twenty-two Member States enjoying an advantage in the European Parliamentary representation. At the same time, the study reveals that that the European Parliament’s composition resulting from the elections did not fully meet the requirement for degressively proportional representation set out in the Lisbon Treaty.