ECPR 5 th Pan-European Conference on EU Politics

1. ECPR 5th Pan-European Conference on EU Politics INEQUALITIES IN REPRESENTATION IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT Prof. RICHARD ROSE & Dr PATRICK BERNHAGEN Porto, Portugal 23-26 June 2010 Our project on Representing Europeans is financed by a grant from the British Economic and Social Research Council

2. REPRESENTATION IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT One person, one vote: YES; all EU citizens can vote One vote, one value: NO; the value varies radically between countries

3. Figure 1.1 CROSS-NATIONAL INEQUALITY IN EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, 2009 Index of inequality (100 = complete equality) Over-represented Under-represented Source: Calculated by dividing the population per MEP in each country by the number of electors per MEP in the whole EU, as reported in Table 1, and multiplying the result by 100.

4. Figure 1.2. DEGREES OF INEQUALITY IN REPRESENTATION Gini Index of Inequality Maximum inequality Source: Calculated by the authors.

5. Explanation PATH DEPENDENT INEQUALITIES IN REPRESENTATION The ECSC pact in the early 1950s Carried over into the Council of Ministers in 1957 And into the first elected Parliament 1979 Increasing inequality: Gini index 0.21 in 1979; 0.27 in 2010

6. Table 3.1 EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PARTIES: VOTES PER MEP

7. Table 3.2 PROPORTIONALITY OF REPRESENTATION OF EP PARTY GROUPS Seats, party groups as of EP 26 July 2009. Numbers to be double checked.

8. Table 3.3 EFFECT OF OVER-REPRESENTATION ON EU BENEFITS Dependent variable: Net benefit from contribution to EU budget, 2008 Variance accounted for: adjusted R2 58% Source: Net benefit: Calculated from Potton (2010: Table 1). Representation index as in Figure 1.1. Per capita GDP: Eurostat. Percent employment in agriculture, unemployment 2007: World Bank.

9. RE-ALLOCATING MEPs LISBON TREATY CONSTRAINTS Minimum of 6 seats per party Maximum of 96 seats per country CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION Gini Index of Inequality. 0 means no inequality Pareto optimal. No (or very few countries) lose an MEP Lamassoure-Severin definition of degressive proportionality

10. Table 4.1 ALTERNATIVE FORMULA FOR ALLOCATING EP SEATS COMPARED Sources: As cited in the text.

11. IMPLICATIONS Party coalitions rather than national populations drive the EP Trans and inter-institutional politics drive EU outputs Inputs of voters remote or absent as well as unequal Majone and Scharpf now claim more popular input needed But the question is: HOW?