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The U.K. has 73 MEPs who will be leaving because of Brexit. Under the proposal, drawn up by the Constitutional Affairs Committee, 51 of those seats would be cut in 2019, taking the overall size of the Parliament down from 751 to 700. The remaining 22 British seats would be re-distributed among the remaining 27 EU countries.
The other 51 seats would be held in reserve and could be used to create pan-European list of MEPs and for MEPs from new member countries as a result of “potential future enlargements” of the EU.
The committee will discuss the proposal in Strasbourg on September 11 and will vote on it at a later date before it passes on to a plenary session of all MEPs, although no dates for the votes have been set. National capitals would also have to sign off on the plan.
The new distribution of seats would apply “once there is legal certainty and the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the union becomes legally effective,” the report said. [...]
The committee’s proposal, which comes after months of discussion between political groups, proposes a re-distribution that would prevent any EU country from losing representation while using “only a minimal fraction of the seats vacated by the U.K,” the report said. [...]