LSE Votes 2014

The European Parliament (EP) is one of the institutions of the European Union (EU). The EU is currently made up of 28 countries, including the United Kingdom (UK). The EP is the only part of the EU directly elected at European level.

 

Elections to the EP take place every five years. Each country runs its own elections for the European Parliament, but they all use some form of proportional representation for them. This means that, instead of the first-past-the-post system where whoever gets the most votes wins outright (winner takes all), a mathematical formula is used to divide the seats up in proportion to how many votes each party/candidate receives.

 

Members of the European Parliament are called MEPs. There are 766 members at the moment, though this will be reduced to 751 for the 2014-2019 parliament. Each country gets its number of members based roughly (though not exactly) on the size of its population. Currently, the UK has 73 MEPs.

 

UK MEPs are elected on the basis of 12 electoral regions. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland elect MEPs as their own region. England is divided into 8 regions - East Midlands, Eastern, London, North East, North West, South East, South West, West Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber.

 

MEPs work in their constituencies and in the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium and Strasbourg, France.