The 73 Chairs Story

Since last summer, I've kinda been wondering what happens to the Brit seats in the EU, after BREXIT.  There are 73 seats, and they will all vacate as the Brits leave.

So ARD (public TV in Germany, Channel One) came up and focused on this seat episode, and it's a bit curious.

Some folks thought that the seats would just go and disappear, bringing the 751 seats down to 678 total.  Well....no.

So there's talk now that 27 of the seats will go to EU nations that have added population over the past twenty-odd years (Luxembourg, Malta, Ireland, and Sweden).  Course, if you used that logic, then nations losing population....ought to lose representation.  Well....no, no one wants to go and decrease seats for nations.

There is talk that Montenegro and Serbia will join the EU within the next five years, so maybe some seats will be dispensed to them (figure ten minimum each). 

The remaining ones?  Well, there is this crazy idea, that you'd open up voting for everyone in the EU and allow 'cross-the-border' voting....giving each German for example, two votes.  He'd vote for one guy in his country, and another for a friend-country/party.  Example: Huns votes for the German SPD Party to be his representative in the EU, and then votes for the liberal far-left party in Austria.  Naturally, the question would follow....does Huns really know much about that party outside of his country?  Well....no.

In some ways, it'd just make sense to downsize to 678 seats and when others join....figure up the number and issue out more chairs as necessary.  But that's something that the EU just can't get their mind set upon. 

Might they go and reserve the 73 seats in case the UK comes back?  Well, I was pondering upon this idea because you might see three or four broken-up Brit states existing in a decade, and all desperate to return. 

Are there more potential countries to join the EU?  It's best not to bring up that topic with intellectuals or journalists, because they'd freak out.  Could Russia join?  No.  If Russia broke up and the Saint Petersburg state wanted to join?  Well....yeah, let's not hype this up much.