Mr. Francis Jacobs:

It is supposed to be digressive, but the European Parliament did this very quickly and it is not properly digressive. If it was proportional, which the German constitutional court would love, and if there really was a federal united states of Europe, then Germany would have 170 or 180 MEPs and Malta and Luxembourg would have one. One can work it out one's self. What has happened is a compromise, because the European Union system is already complicated enough. If it was like the United States, as some have suggested, there would two chambers in the European Parliament, one in which Ireland would have the same number of Members as Germany and another one which would be proportional. In the US, California has 60 congressmen and two senators while Wyoming has one congressman and two senators. That has been debated by many people within the European Parliament, but it is seen as making the system, which is already complicated enough, even more complicated. This is why, within one European Parliament, the term "digressive proportionality" is an example of the horrible jargon I mentioned earlier.