As you may know,the next elections to the European Parliament are expected to be held between 23

and 26 May 2019. A total of 751 Members of the European Parliament currently represent the citizens
from 28 member states.

Decisions on the apportionment of seats in the Parliament are governed by article 14 of the Treaty of
Lisbon.Each member state has a fixed number of members of the European Parliament ; from six for
Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and Estonia to 96 for Germany, making a total of 751. With the departure of
the 73 British members, the Members of the European Parliament and Council have agreed to reduce
the size of the European Parliament from 751 to 705 seats as of the 2019 elections. This reduction would
leave room for possible future enlargements of the Union, while the rest of seats the UK leaves vacant
will be reallocated to countries which were rather underrepresented.

You may wonder what the Members of the European Parliament do…

Well,every month except August the Parliament meets in Strasbourg for a four-day plenary session and
six times a year it meets for two days each in Brussels,where the Parliament's committees, political
groups and other organs also mainly meet. In addition, an MEP may be part of an international
delegation and have meetings with outside delegations coming to Brussels or Strasbourg.

MEPs represent individual countries or regions but in Parliament they are organised into eight different
cross-nationality political groups, except the 15 non-attached members.The two largest groups are the
European People's Party (EPP) and the Socialists & Democrats (S&D). These two groups have dominated
the Parliament for much of its life, continuously holding between 50 and 70 percent of the seats
together.

So,in one month around 450 million European citizens will have the opportunity to influence the future
direction of the European Union. The elections are taking place during a period of political turmoil for
the European Union.

In many countries, the role of the EU now dominates domestic politics too. And for the first time, there’s
a real possibility that anti-EU parties could win enough seats to disrupt legislative business rather than
just rail against it, as current members Nigel Farage of the U.K. and former members Marine Le Pen of
France and Matteo Salvini of Italy have done.

This is why,we all have to take responsibility and go to vote,because every vote maters.I’m really
hopeful that you will go to the polling station.TY.