HL Deb 18 January 1993 vol 541 c58WA
Lord Monson

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Why the booklet Britain in Europe, recently published by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (with a foreword by the Prime Minister) and intended for wide public circulation, asserts that in the European Parliament "seats are shared between member states broadly according to size" when in reality some member states have granted between three and eleven times as many seats per capita in the European Parliament as others.

Baroness Chalker of Wallasey

The statement in the bookletBritain in Europe is correct. The larger member states have many more MEPs than the smaller ones. It is right that the number of constituents served by one MEP varies between member states, from 66,667 for Luxembourg to 980,247 for Germany, although Luxembourg is sui generis because of its tiny population. MEPs in most other member states represent between 400,000 and 700,000 constituents each. These differences will be narrowed by the agreement at Edinburgh on the size of the European Parliament from 1994.