A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament.
When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community) first met in 1952, its members were directly appointed by the governments of member states from among those already sitting in their own national parliaments. Since 1979, however, MEPs have been elected by direct universal suffrage every five years. Each member state establishes its own method for electing MEPs – and in some states this has changed over time – but the system chosen must be a form of proportional representation. Some member states elect their MEPs to represent a single national constituency; other states apportion seats to sub-national regions for election.
There may also be non-voting observers when a new country is seeking membership of the European Union.
Election
From 1 January 2007, when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, there were 785 MEPs, but their number was reduced to 736 at the elections in 2009. With effect from the elections held in May 2014 the number had risen to 751. This reduced to 705 members after the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union in January 2020, with each member state between 6 and 96 MEPs. From the 2024 elections, there are 720 members.
Elections are held once every five years, on the basis of universal suffrage. There is no uniform voting system for the election of MEPs; rather, each member state is free to choose its own system, subject to three restrictions:
- The system must be a form of proportional representation, under either the party list or Single Transferable Vote system.
- The electoral area may be subdivided if this will not generally affect the proportional nature of the voting system.
- Any election threshold on the national level must not exceed five percent.
The allocation of seats to each member state is based on the principle of degressive proportionality, so that, while the size of the population of each nation is taken into account, smaller states elect more MEPs than would be strictly justified by their populations alone. As the number of MEPs granted to each member state has arisen from treaty negotiations, there is no precise formula for the apportionment of seats. No change in this configuration can occur without the unanimous consent of all national governments.
Length of service
The European Parliament has a high turnover of members compared to some national parliaments. After every recent election, just over half of elected members had not been members in the previous parliament. Elmar Brok served the longest continuous term from the first elections in 1979 until 2019 (40 years).
Seats in the European Parliament
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Election year
!Seats
|-
|1979
|410
|-
|1984
|434
|-
|1989
|518
|-
|1994
|567
|-
|1999
|626
|-
|2004
|732
|-
|2009
|736
|-
|2014
|751
|-
|2019
|751
|-
|2024
|720
|-
|2029
|720
|}
MEPs within the Parliament
thumb|upright=1.2|[[List of members of the European Parliament (2024–2029)|Members of the 10th European Parliament:
]]MEPs organise themselves into cross-national political groups, except for a few non-attached members known as Non-Inscrits who choose not to join a Group (or no Group wants them). The two largest groups are the European People's Party Group (EPP Group) and the Socialists & Democrats (S&D). These two groups have dominated the Parliament for much of its life, continuously holding between 40 and 70 percent of the seats together. No single group has ever held a majority in Parliament. As a result of being broad alliances of national parties, European groups parties are decentralised and hence have more in common with parties in federal states like Germany or the United States than unitary states like the majority of the EU states. Although, the European groups, between 2004 and 2009, were actually more cohesive than their US counterparts.
Aside from working through their groups, individual members are also guaranteed a number of individual powers and rights within the Parliament:
- the right to vote on all legislative proposals, the EU budget and all other items placed before the Parliament.
- the right to table a motion for resolution
- the right to put questions to the Council of the European Union, the Commission, and to the leaders of the Parliament
- the right to table an amendment to any text in committee or (jointly with others) in plenary
- the right to make explanations of vote
- the right to raise points of order
- the right to move the inadmissibility of a matter
Job of an MEP
Every month except August the Parliament meets in Strasbourg for a four-day plenary session. For the rest of the time, it is based in Brussels, where some six supplementary plenary sessions are held for two days each, and where the Parliament's committees, political groups, and other organs also mainly meet. The obligation to spend one week a month in Strasbourg was imposed on Parliament by the member state governments at the 1992 European Council meeting in Edinburgh.
Payment and privileges
The total cost of the European Parliament is approximately €2.247 billion per year according to its 2023 budget, with the cost of translation and interpretation, and the cost of its buildings in two main locations, being significant extra burdens not faced by national parliaments.
Salary
Until 2009, MEPs were paid (by their own Member State) exactly the same salary as a member of the lower House of their own national parliament. As a result, there was a wide range of salaries in the European Parliament. In 2002, Italian MEPs earned €130,000, while Spanish MEPs earned less than a quarter of that at €32,000.
However, in July 2005, the Council agreed to a single statute for all MEPs, following a proposal by the Parliament. Thus, since the 2009 elections, all MEPs receive a monthly pre-tax salary set at 38.5 percent of that of a judge at the European Court of Justice. As of July 1, 2019, the monthly salary is of , or just over per year. MEPs also receive a general expenditure allowance of per month.
Financial interests
Members declare their financial interests in order to prevent any conflicts of interest. These declarations are published in a register and are available on the Internet. They must also make a detailed declaration of private interests, listing their memberships of company boards, associations, and public bodies (including those held during the three years prior to their election). They must also publish on-line all meetings that they have had with lobbyists and representatives of third country governments. They may not accept gifts, other than courtesy gifts valued at less than €150. They must declare all sources of outside income if their total outside income exceeds €5000.
Immunities
Under the protocol on the privileges and immunities of the European Union, MEPs in their home state receive the same immunities as their own national parliamentarians. In other member states, MEPs are immune from detention and from legal proceedings, except when caught in the act of committing an offence. This immunity may be waived by application to the European Parliament by the authorities of the member state in question.
Individual members
Members' experience
Around a third of MEPs have previously held national parliamentary mandates, and over 10 percent have ministerial experience at a national level. There are usually a number of former prime ministers and former members of the European Commission. Many other MEPs have held office at a regional or local level in their home states.
Current MEPs also include former judges, trade union leaders, media personalities, actors, soldiers, singers, athletes, and political activists.
Many outgoing MEPs move into other political office. Several presidents, prime ministers or deputy prime ministers of member states are former MEPs, including former Presidents of France Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande, Jacques Chirac and François Mitterrand, the former Deputy PM of the United Kingdom Nick Clegg, Danish former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and Belgian former PM Elio Di Rupo.
Dual mandates
A dual mandate, in which an individual is a member of both their national parliament and the European Parliament, was officially discouraged by a growing number of political parties and member states, and is prohibited as of 2009. In the 2004–2009 Parliament, a small number of members still held a dual mandate. Ian Paisley, John Taylor and John Hume once held triple mandates as MEP, Member of Parliament in the House of Commons, and Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly simultaneously.