Number of deputies - The Federal Returning Officer

Bundestag elections

Since the 21^st electoral period, the German Bundestag has consisted of 630 members. Of these, 299 are elected directly from nominations in the constituencies and the others from lists of candidates representing political parties in each of Germany’s 16 Länder (known as Land lists). Up until the 2021 election, the Bundestag generally had 598 members.

In the Bundestag elections of 2013 to 2021, additional seats were created to balance seats that were won directly in the constituencies but were not backed by a sufficient percentage of second votes. This was to avoid overhang mandates and the effect of the “negative voting weight”, and to preserve the basic feature of proportional representation. In the 2021 election, the number of Bundestag members increased to 735 as a result.

To prevent the number of seats from increasing further, a new rule was introduced for the 21^st electoral period which specifies that in each Land a party only receives the number of seats that it is entitled to based on the second vote. Therefore, not all candidates who win the relative majority of first votes in a constituency will receive a constituency seat.

European Parliament elections

At present, the European Parliament has 705 members (not including the President). As a rule, the number of seats to which the individual Member States of the European Union (EU) are entitled depends on population size and is based on the principle of degressive proportionality. Accordingly, the small EU Member States have more seats in relation to the size of their population than large Member States. In the 2009 European election, Germany was allocated 99 seats, which was the then maximum, while Malta received the minimum number of 5 seats. This had been laid down in the Treaty establishing the European Community as revised by the Treaty of Nice and last amended by the Acts of Accession of Bulgaria and Romania. The EU Reform Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force on 1 December 2009, now provides for an upper limit of 751 seats (including that of the President) with a maximum of 96 seats (Germany) and a minimum of 6 seats (Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta) per Member State.

Since the withdrawal of the United Kingdom on 31 January 2020, the European Parliament has had only 705 seats. 27 of the United Kingdom’s 73 seats were redistributed among 14 Member States which had been slightly underrepresented. The remaining 46 seats were set aside to provide for future enlargements of the EU. Germany kept its 96 seats.

Member State	Distribution of seats in the European Parliament
	2004 - 2009	after the
	2004 - 2009	2009 European Election	entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty ¹	accession of Croatia	2014 European Election ¹	withdrawal of United Kingdom ¹
Austria	18	17	19 (+2)	19	18 (-1)	19 (+1)
Belgium	24	22	22	22	21 (-1)	21
Bulgaria	18	17	18 (+1)	18	17 (-1)	17
Croatia	–	–	–	12	11 (-1)	12 (+1)
Cyprus	6	6	6	6	6	6
Czech Republic	24	22	22	22	21 (-1)	21
Denmark	14	13	13	13	13	14 (+1)
Estonia	6	6	6	6	6	7 (+1)
Finland	14	13	13	13	13	14 (+1)
France	78	72	74 (+2)	74	74	79 (+5)
Germany	99	99	96/99 ²	99 ²	96	96
Greece	24	22	22	22	21 (-1)	21
Hungary	24	22	22	22	21 (-1)	21
Ireland	13	12	12	12	11 (-1)	13 (+2)
Italy	78	72	73 (+1)	73	73	76 (+3)
Latvia	9	8	9 (+1)	9	8 (-1)	8
Lithuania	13	12	12	12	11 (-1)	11
Luxembourg	6	6	6	6	6	6
Malta	5	5	6 (+1)	6	6	6
Netherlands	27	25	26 (+1)	26	26	29 (+3)
Poland	54	50	51 (+1)	51	51	52 (+1)
Portugal	24	22	22	22	21 (-1)	21
Romania	35	33	33	33	32 (-1)	33 (+1)
Slovakia	14	13	13	13	13	14 (+1)
Slovenia	7	7	8 (+1)	8	8	8
Spain	54	50	54 (+4)	54	54	59 (+5)
Sweden	19	18	20 (+2)	20	20	21 (+1)
United Kingdom	78	72	73 (+1)	73	73	–
Total	785	736	751/754	766	751	705

1 Figure in brackets: change on the previous number.
2 Germany kept the 99 seats it had been assigned in the European election.

A database containing the biographies, photos and addresses of members is available on the website of the European Parliament.