Victoriano Ramírez, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Granada and Director of the Electoral Methods Research Group, warns that if the United Kingdom (UK) were now to remain in the European Union, there would need to be an agreed recalculation of how many representatives this Member State should be assigned in the forthcoming European Parliament elections in May.
Of the UK’s original 73 seats in the European Parliament, 27 have already been vacated and reassigned to other Member States including France and Spain to correct the underrepresentation of such countries.
Therefore, if the UK were now to back out of its planned exit from the European Union, a fresh agreement would need to be reached regarding how many representatives this Member State should have in the European Parliament (EP) elections this May.
Professor Victoriano Ramírez González, Director of the Electoral Methods Research Group at the University of Granada, has calculated that, if agreements established between the other Member States were to be upheld, the UK should be assigned between 76 and 79 seats in the EP, as this would reflect the number allocated to Italy and France, respectively. The fairest solution would be to assign 78 seats to the UK, he argues, given that its population size is roughly between that of Italy and France (and, of the two, is slightly closer to that of France).
Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Granada, Ramírez co-authored what is known as the ‘Cambridge compromise’, which was proposed in January 2011 to address the wider issue of representation in the EP. He also wrote one of three reports commissioned by the Committee on Constitutional Affairs in 2017 to determine the EP’s composition for 2019–2014.
Professor Ramírez explains that the 27 seats that the UK left vacant due to Brexit have been reassigned to France (5), Spain (5), Italy (3), Netherlands (3), and Ireland (2), plus one seat each to Poland, Romania, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia, and Estonia. This reassignment has been made “because the current distribution does not fulfil one of the stipulations agreed under the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon—namely, that of degressive proportionality. This means that a country’s representation ratio (that is, the ratio between its population size and number of seats) should effectively decrease when passing from more, to less, populous Member States. Hence, this ratio should decrease successively from Germany to France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Poland, and so on, ending with Malta (following the order of these countries by population size)”.
However, the principle of decreasing order of representation ratios does not always hold, as there are some less populous countries with higher representation ratios in the EP. For example, Spain (with 46 million inhabitants) is much less populous than Germany (with 82 million) or Italy (61 million), yet it has a higher representation ratio than either of these Member States. Due to such anomalies, the stipulations enshrined in the Treaty of Lisbon were not upheld in the period 2009–14 or 2014–19.
A more appropriate formula
In 2011, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs attempted to establish a formula capable of distributing seats more appropriately. It enlisted the expert help of the University of Cambridge, commissioning seven mathematicians and a political scientist to calculate the optimum formula. The result, the ‘Cambridge Compromise’, was simple, transparent, and durable. Yet it was rejected by the countries with intermediate population sizes and by some of the less-populated Member States, which would lose representation if the formula were applied.
With the Cambridge Compromise off the table, MEPs began negotiating a new, pragmatic consensus, in which allocation for the period 2014–19 would be based on the principle that countries would neither gain seats, nor lose more than one seat each. As this approach was not in line with the premise of degressive proportionality, currently Germany’s representation ratio is lower than those of France, the UK, and even Spain (all of which have a smaller population than Germany).
Two years ago, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs took up the issue of representation once again, in an attempt to ensure that, in 2019, the composition of the EP would meet all the stipulations of the Treaty of Lisbon. Mathematicians were again brought in to agree on a formula; and in 2017 they produced three reports that were put before members of the Committee in Brussels.
This time, explains Ramírez, “although we are not out of the woods yet, there was greater harmony between the mathematical proposals and the wishes of the MEPs. One outcome of this is the forecast composition for 2019”.
Spain to have 59 seats
Spain, which will have 59 seats, an increase on the previous 54, will have an acceptable level of representation in the next period. France will also be allocated 5 more seats; Italy, 3; and other countries, 1 each. All these increases have been made possible, without any State having to lose representation, thanks to the UK’s planned Brexit departure, which has freed up sufficient seats to make these adjustments.
But what if, at the last minute, the UK were to decide to remain in the European Union, given that some of its current seats have already been assigned to other countries for the May elections?
Two possible outcomes might be:
a) to conduct a new distribution that fulfils the requirements of the Treaty of Lisbon. “In that regard”, observes Ramírez, “the most recent formulas would achieve this. And not only that, they would enable a distribution in which no Member State would lose more than one of the seats it currently holds. This would be the most appropriate solution”.
b) to assign between 77 and 79 seats to the UK (78, according to the recommendation of Professor Ramírez), but without modifying the forecast assignation for the other countries. However, this scenario would mean exceeding the maximum of 751 EP seats established under terms of the Treaty of Lisbon.
The first option is unlikely to be accepted in the short term, because several countries would see a reduction in the representation agreed for 2019, to which they would object. And while the second option would be considered illegal, as it exceeds the stipulated maximum size for the EP (with 783 seats as opposed to 751), it would help achieve a swift consensus, both in the EP and in the Commission.
Media enquiries:
Victoriano Ramírez González
Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Granada
Telephone: +958 24 41 58
Email: vramirez@ugr.es
