Malta’s sixth EP seat may become reality in December, as Belgium set to ratify treaty

After a three year wait, Labour’s elected MEP Joseph Cuschieri may find himself a seat in the European Parliament in mid-December.

8 November 2011, 12:00am
by Karl Stagno-Navarra

2 min read

According to ‘European Report’ published last night, it was explained that the European Parliament's last plenary session of the year in Strasbourg – expected to be held between December 12 and 15 - could witness the arrival of 18 new MEPs.

Cuschieri may take his seat as the ratification of the change to the treaties, to increase the number of EP seats temporarily from 736 to 754 by member state parliaments or governments is expected to be concluded by the end of November or December at the latest.

Belgium is the last country that has not fully ratified the protocol to be annexed to the treaties.

The country’s nine parliaments have all approved the protocol but in two instances the executive has not yet signed it off.

According to a Belgian diplomat, this should take place in the coming days. Once this is done, the ratification papers will be sent to Rome for them to be annexed to the treaties. "With a bit of luck, they could even be deposited as early as November so that the deputies can sit in December," the Belgian diplomat told Europolitics.

At the latest, the 18 extra parliamentarians would sit in plenary in January, added the diplomat. Since the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty was still incomplete at the time, the 2009 European elections were held on the basis of the Nice Treaty (736 MEPs, with a maximum of 99 for Germany and five for Malta).

However, as a result of demographic developments since 2000, the distribution of seats resulting from the Nice Treaty has been deemed unfair. The ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, in December 2009, corrects somewhat this imbalance and provides for an assembly of 750+1 members, with a maximum of 96 seats for Germany and a minimum of six for Malta, distributed according to the principle of degressive proportionality'.

Spain was granted four extra seats; France, Austria and Sweden two each; and Bulgaria, Italy, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and the UK all got one each.