Supranational bodies with significant decision-making power encompassing a number of countries, such as the European Parliament, are as yet a rarity but may become more commonplace with the globalization of politics and the aggregation of interests at a regional level. The European Union (EU) has adopted, and now made effective, a requirement for all member states to adopt a proportional system for elections to the European Parliament: 26 member states use List PR —included Croatia which was just incorporated to the EU in July 2013—, and two (the Republic of Ireland and Malta) use STV. Seats are allocated to member states not purely in proportion to population but by a tiered system which gives equal numbers of representatives to countries of approximately equal size but also over-represents smaller countries.
The designers of such systems give greater priority to choosing systems which produce regional and partisan balance than to localized geographical representation. Currently, the European Parliament has 766 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) representing over 700 million people, which makes small district connections between voter and representative impossible.
