STAŤ / ARTICLE
Jakub Charvát:
Zastoupení členských zemí v Evropském parlamentu po volbách 2019
[The EU Member States’ Representation in the European Parliament after the 2019 Elections]
Charvát, J. 2020. „Zastoupení členských zemí v Evropském parlamentu po volbách 2019.“ Acta Fakulty filozofické Západočeské univerzity v Plzni / West Bohemian Review of Social Sciences & Humanities 12 (2): 1–18.
Received 24 June 2020 / Accepted 28 August 2020 / Published 9 October 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24132/actaff.2020.12.2.1
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 the EU citizens. Because geography is 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 spatial aspect of the composition of the European Parliament resulting from the 2019 election. The representation in the European Parliament may be degressively proportional, which implies malapportionment of seats across the EU Member States. The paper, thus, seeks to quantify the malapportionment in the 2019 election at both the aggregate level (by the adaption of Loosemore and Hanby´s distortion index) and individual level (advantage ratio and the value of a vote). It concludes malapportionment was just below 14,5% of the total seats in 2019 while the 2019 election did not bring the degressively proportional representation in the European Parliament as required by the Lisbon Treaty.
European Parliament, seat apportionment, territorial representation, degressive proportionality, malapportionment, value of a vote
