European Parliamentary Elections
European Parliamentary elections are held every five years, most recently in 2004 and the next in May 2009. Since 1999 the elections have used a system of proportional representation called the regional party list system. In this the electorate cast their votes for a party and the proportion of seats allocated in a region to a particular party is based on their share of the vote.
There are 785 MEPs from 27 states representing 492 million people. The UK currently has 78 MEPs; after the next elections this will be reduced to 72 as the total number falls to 736. The Labour Party has 19 MEPs who sit in the Party of European Socialists (PES) along with other left and centre-left representatives from every other EU state. The Conservatives have withdrawn from the centre-right European People's Party in order to form their own group at the next election.
Spelthorne lies in the South East Region (which excludes London), in which Labour has one MEP Peter Skinner.
The European Parliament is one half of the legislative arm of the European Union, and sits in Brussels 3 weeks a month and in Strasbourg the other week. The half of the legislative arm is the Council of Ministers, which is comprised of the ministers from each national government department relevant to each specific issue. The European Commission Acts as the Executive and is comprised of one commissioner from each state (The UK's being Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson). The Commission controls the day to day running of the European Union. The President of the Commission is nominated by the Council of Ministers and elected by the Parliament.
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