Now, as regards agreements between member states, that’s already happened. This decision is actually involving only the parliament, so what we’re (probably) seeing is some French reluctance to immediate acceptance of the already named MEPs (since they themselves have not managed to agree on which their are yet – but again, this is not an EU issue, but a domestic French issue). The budget I can’t really see how it’s an issue: we’re talking about a place that employs more than 4500 people in three cities, with two really large buildings allocated for virtually the same employees in both cities and out of which most people are high executive enough to be paid more than the MEPs, and vastly more than their assistants. It’s not an issue of allocating more space – I have been past both of my offices, in both of the two buildings, in both of the official cities of the parliament. I don’t have the keys to them though.

Bear in mind that the assigning of the new Commission was delayed by about 6 months to await the new treaty – the new Commission was otherwise supposed to have been assigned already earlier in 2009. This is probably also how they could move relatively painlessly into the new institutional structure, although they have had some problems with the institutional arrangements and power allocation within the institutions (primarily Commission, but also with respect to Council).

And regardless of the apparent pointlessness of more MEPs, they do make a lot of difference. In the small political groups, like the Green group, an extra MEP makes more difference for the group as a whole than it would do in a large group, like the Socialists. But even within the Socialist group, an extra member of a national delegation within the group makes a lot of difference when it comes to policy development in the group.

Most of the work isn’t even about voting, surprisingly. Actually, one vote out of 751 makes surprisingly little difference.

As for objections, the only member state that loses MEPs from the Lisbon treaty is Germany, and they would in the current parliamentary constellation lose 3 MEPs. However, and due to the elections last year, the three extra assigned MEPs from Germany will get to remain for the remainder of the legislature. I fail to see why it would be legimate to withhold the fulfillment of the promise of higher representativity that championed as the main benefit of the Agreement during the 9 years leading up to its ratification only because they did not sort paperwork in the EU, nor in the memberstates, when they reasonably /knew/ the treaty would enter into force only 6 months after the election.

Actual representation…blimey :)

Things go wrong nation wide already (Netherlands), what do you expect from a monster like the EU?

Nice though there’s at least two pirates in the European Parliament.

The president _was_ elected, unanimously, by the 27 heads of government of the EU member states. Under the Lisbon Treaty (unanimously ratified by the democratic governments of all the member states) it was these (democratically elected) 27 heads of government that had the duty of voting for the EU president.

It may not be the best system, and people can argue about the best implementation of voting systems (electoral colleges, proportional representation, direct democracy) but to say that the new president is “unelected” seems counter-factual.

@neocon…
Is that the best you can do nowadays, you must be losing it. Maybe you’re slowly getting out of the denial phase that you are really a pirate.

Power to the pirates!