EU:Irish hopes of retaining 13 seats at the European Parliament have received a boost with MEPs proposing to increase the number of parliamentary seats to 750 in 2009.
However, a diplomatic battle is developing in Brussels over EU states' representation in the parliament, with Spain already demanding that it be handed several of the extra seats.
A draft report published yesterday by the parliament's constitutional affairs committee says the total number of MEPs should be set at 750 rather than the 736 seats agreed under the Nice Treaty. It also proposes that none of the additional seats should be set aside for Croatia - a state that is targeting EU accession as early as 2009 - under new guidelines currently being drafted alongside the new EU reform treaty.
Croatia, which has a population of about 4.4 million, would have soaked up at least 12 of the additional seats. But the report says seats should not be set aside for Croatia because "it is not guaranteed that any accession will be completed" in the short term.
The draft report, prepared by French conservative MEP Alain Lamassoure and Romanian socialist MEP Adrian Severin, proposes reducing the current ceiling on the number of MEPs that an individual country can have from 99 to 96. This proposal would only affect Germany, which would lose three MEPs.
The report also suggests increasing the minimum number of seats for a member state to six, a proposal that would hand Malta one extra seat.
Taking into account the proposed changes, there would be 16 additional seats available for distribution after the European elections in 2009. These would be allocated using a principle known as "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 the report says there is no precise definition of the principle, leaving significant room for EU states to lobby to get greater representation.
Ireland currently has 13 MEPs because the number of seats in the European Parliament has temporarily been expanded to 785 seats to accommodate the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the union. But under the guidelines agreed in the Nice Treaty from 2009, Irish representation would fall to 12 seats.
Minister of State for European Affairs Dick Roche has already indicated that the Government will lobby to retain 13 seats on the basis that Ireland's population is rising rapidly.
But with just 16 extra seats available and 27 states requesting extra representation at the parliament, it remains uncertain if the Irish campaign will be successful. Spain is demanding several extra MEPs on the basis of its rapidly growing population. Madrid recently presented its own academic report at the parliament under which Ireland would get just 11 MEPs rather than the 12 MEPs proposed under the Nice Treaty.
Presenting the report to MEPs late on Monday, Mr Lamassoure said talks on the composition of the parliament would generate a "lot of emotion". But he warned that if no agreement was found among EU states, the number of MEPs would fall to 736.