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First of all, what is the European Parliament? The European Parliament, or just the Parliament, is the EU’s legislative body. Although they cannot propose laws, unless by citizens petitions, the MEPs vote and negotiate laws alongside with the Council. The Parliament also has supervisory and budgetary powers, establishing the EU budget with the Council, discussing monetary policy with the ECB, electing the Commission President and approving its composition and more.
Headquarters and members of the EP
Headquarters and members of the EP
The EP has two seats: one in Brussels and one in Strasbourg. Despite being the most well-known – namely for its special design – the latter is mostly used for plenary sessions and global voting, which usually take place once a month (sometimes twice). On the other hand, the one in Belgium is where your MEP (i.e. Member of the European Parliament) spends most the time.
EP-Strasbourg-300x165.jpgImage: Weiss Building, European Parliament – Strasbourg, France
EP-Brussels-300x188.jpgImage: European Parliament Building – Brussels, Belgium
vsnjq2j41xihz4sh4pfkm.pngThere are 720 MEPs, elected every five years by the citizens of each Member State. As you can see in the table, each country has a specific number of seats based on their population size. Germany has 96 seats, while Malta has only 6. However, if you consider that Germany has more than 83 million citizens and Malta has around 490k, this means that one MEP for Germany is representing 864k people, while a MEP from Malta is responsible for the representation of just 82k people. This means that the seat distribution is not strictly proportional; it empowers smaller countries, thus balancing policy making in the European Parliament.
Either way, once elected, the MEPs do not represent their country, but the citizens, and therefore they are divided by political groups. Currently there are 8 political groups in the EP and, in order to form a group, it’s needed a minimum of 25 Members coming from at least one-quarter of the Member States (7 countries).
Following the 2024 European elections, this is how seats are allocated for the time being:
The European People’s Party, this center-right group is the largest at the moment. This christian democrats and liberal conservatives have 188 elected members.
The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, the center-left social democrats, has 136 seats.
PfE - Patriots for Europe, big far-right group in the EP, has 84 seats.
There are 78 elected members in the European Conservatives and Reformists, the second far-right group in the EP.
Renew Europe, the centrist and liberal group, has 77 members.
Greens/European Free Alliance, ecologists and regionalists, account for 53 seats.
The Left, the far-left group, has 46 members.
the Non-attached MEPs are 33.
Lastly, the ESN - Europe of Sovereign Nations, the third far-right group in the EP has 25 members.
Screenshot 2026-07-23 at 19.24.58.pngCommittees
Committees
Let’s move on: the 720 MEPs are divided into committees and subcommittees, each of them dedicated to a specific policy area, for example: ECON (Economic and Monetary Affairs); LIBE (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) ITRE (Industry, Research and Energy); and so on.
This European Parlliament video from November 2019 gives you an idea about the way the Parliament works.
EP - What's plenary and how does it work.mp4To learn more about this subject:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/about/list-of-committees
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/powers-and-procedures
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/qualified-majority/
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/votes.html?tab=order
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