Translation of "Attribution de tous les sièges à pourvoir " (French → English) :

One-third of the fifty- three seats on the Commission are open to election every year based on a regional allocation of seats.

The d'Hondt method is an example of the method of divisors (it is based on the series of divisors 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., until the seats to be filled have all been distributed. It was in 1882 that Victor d'Hondt, a professor of law at the University of Ghent, presented a system for allocating seats to different political groups in Belgium, thus permitting proportional representation. The method had a great future ahead of it, because many Member States of the European Union now use it, in both national and European elections, to distribute seats among the different lists/candidates standing.

In this system, the number of voters is divided by the number of seats to be filled, plus one, with the operation being repeated until all the seats have been distributed.

5.2. before the 2009 elections, and irrespective of the pace of accessions, the number of representatives to be elected to Parliament in each Member State should be calculated on the basis of the population of a Union comprising all the applicant countries with which negotiations are being held, subject to an upper limit of 700 seats; it should be determined on the basis of population, under a proportional allocation system adjusted by allotting each State a minimum of four seats ;

In 2002 the Council modified the 1976 Act in order to codify the introduction everywhere of proportional representation, to allow explicitly STV and preferential voting, to cater for territorial constituencies, to fix a maximum threshold of 5 per cent, to phase out the dual mandate, and to let national law apply to the withdrawal of mandates and the filling of vacancies.

There shall be as many successive counts of the votes as are necessary to equal the number of places for which the consultation is being conducted (clauses 51(2) and 55).