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AFP
Brussels
The European Parliament should be cut in size after Britain leaves the bloc and some lawmakers should be elected on pan-EU tickets, senior members said on Tuesday.
In elections in May 2019, two months after Brexit, the number of seats in the legislature should be cut from from 751 to 705, an influential committee of MEPs said in a report.
Britain currently has 73 seats, of which some should be shared out among remaining countries, and the rest held for planned pan-EU lists of lawmakers who do not represent individual nations, it said.
Danuta Huebner, the Polish lawmaker responsible for the report, said they had been"able to achieve a key success, namely to reduce the size of the European Parliament."
"This will make our institution leaner whilst ensuring its political operability."
EU national leaders are set to discuss the proposals at a summit in February, with a final decision in June. Any decision would then have to be ratified by the remaining 27 states in the union.
The report by the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee said 27 seats will be shared out among 14 remaining EU countries"that are currently slightly under-represented."
France and Spain would be the biggest winners with five more seats, while Italy would get three.
EU countries receive a number of seats in the parliament that is roughly proportionate to their population, meaning Germany and France have the most, and Malta and Luxembourg the fewest.
