Summary of the report "The Ascent of Autonomous Nations" by Matthew Bumford: ideasforeurope.eu/publication/the-ascent-of-autonomous-nations/
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Since 1979 the European Parliament has been the only directly elected European Union institution.
It is the voice of Europe’s citizens, who elect its 754 members every 5 years.
In Europe all citizens have a voice, but, do all citizens have the same influence?
The Lisbon treaty sets a minimum of 6 Members of the European Parliament for the smallest member states and a maximum of 99 Members for the largest.
This is called degressive proportionality principle.
This means that the average number of inhabitants represented by each Member of the European Parliament is higher in larger member states than in the smaller ones.
This is so that all viewpoints have a fair share of representation and plurality is ensured.
Is diversity equally respected within European Union member states?
What happens if we look at nations, countries or constituencies in multi national states like Wales, Galicia, Scotland, the Basque Country, Flanders or Catalonia?
Well, we see that most of them fall short of the average number of Members of the European parliament per inhabitant.
What would happen if they had the same representation as a member state?
Estimating the number of Members of the European Parliament per population with a simple mathematical formula where x is population in millions we can predict a better representation in the European Parliament for Catalonia – increasing from 7 to 16, Flanders – from 13 to 15, Scotland – from 6 to 13, Wales from 4 to 10, the Basque Autonomous Community – from 6 to 9 and Galicia – from 3 to 9.
