MEPs' favourite topic — their seats, and how they get elected

Few things interest politicians more than the way they are elected. But finding a system that most can agree on continues to elude MEPs.

One of the innovations in the Lisbon Treaty was that MEP seats are divided between the EU-27 according to the principle of so-called "degressive proportionality".

At the moment, that means that the number of seats ranges from the six held by Luxembourg and Malta to Germany's 96.