2009 European Parliament Elections

Voting in the 2009 European Parliament elections will take place across the EU from 4 to 7 June. In the United Kingdom voting will be on Thursday 4 June 2009.
The number of UK MEPs is to be reduced at these elections from 78 currently to 72. On the basis of the 2004 results, the UK’s six fewer MEPs would have meant reductions of three MEPs for the Conservatives, two for the Liberal Democrats and one for Labour. For Great Britain, seats in the European Parliament are allocated to Parties according to a “d’Hondt” quota system which operates for each region. For Northern Ireland a different system of Single Transferable Vote is used.
This note sets out the changes to the number of seats by region and what this would have meant if the 2004 elections had been fought on this basis.