Efforts to secure an additional seat for Ireland in the European Parliament suffered a setback when it was revealed that a draft report by the assembly's constitutional affairs committee, to be published today, shows Ireland's representation remaining at 12 MEPs after the next European elections.
Under a formula proposed to the committee, four extra seats would go to Spain; two new seats to France, Sweden and Austria and one extra MEP to Britain; Poland; Portugal; the Netherlands; Bulgaria, Latvia and Sweden. EU leaders recently agreed to expand the parliament's representation from 2009 to 750, a decision that provides 16 extra seats. Today's initial proposal by French MEP Alain Lamassoure is a disappointment for the Government, which campaigned to try to retain its current allocation of 13 seats.
Minister of State for European AffairsDick Roche spoke to Mr Lamassoure last Friday and the Government sent a letter to the French MEP yesterday laying out arguments why it should be allocated an extra seat.
In his conversation with Mr Lamassoure, Mr Roche said Ireland would be the only EU state likely to hold a referendum on the new EU Reform Treaty and should be given an extra seat to help sell the treaty to the public. He said Ireland has the fastest growing population in Europe due to immigration and its representation should reflect that.
"With our coming referendum in mind, it would be advantageous if Ireland could be seen to have won an additional European Parliament seat on foot of population increases caused largely by substantial migration from other EU member states," said Mr Roche, according to his speaking notes seen by The Irish Times.
EU leaders are desperate to avoid public votes on the new treaty in case it is rejected in a similar manner to the EU constitution. French and Dutch voters both voted against the constitution in 2005, forcing a rethink on how to reform the union.
Ireland currently has 13 MEPs because the number of seats has been temporarily expanded to 785 to accommodate Romania and Bulgaria's accession to the EU. But under the guidelines agreed in the Nice treaty from 2009, Irish representation would fall to 12 seats, forcing the Government to commission an independent review of constituency boundaries in the Republic.
The initial proposal is based on "digressive proportionality" which suggests that "the bigger the population of a member state, the higher must be the number of citizens each MEP represents". But there is no exact definition of the principle, leaving room for EU states to lobby for extra seats.
Spain, the main winner in today's report, lobbied aggressively for more seats at the last EU summit in June. In contrast, the Government only began its campaign in recent days.