Flanders threatened with underrepresentation in the European Parliament

In 2014, Belgium will lose one seat, dropping to from 22 to 21, in the European Parliament because Croatia will be acceding to the EU in June and because the results of the demographic evolution within the Member States must also be taken into account. Must Flanders relinquish a seat in the European Parliament in 2014? If the current internal Belgian calculation formula is applied to the new distribution across Member States, which will be approved by the European Parliament tomorrow, it will. Flanders currently has 13 European Parliament members, but this will drop to 12 if the Belgian law of 23 March 1989 is applied. This is disadvantageous for Flanders. In the European Parliament’s new proposal, Member States such as Denmark, Finland and Slovakia will keep their 13 seats, one more than Flanders, while each of them has a million fewer residents. The N-VA therefore wants the internal Belgian calculation formula for the distribution of the number of European Parliament members across our federate entities to be applied to the demographic and electoral reality.