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In 2009, Romania had a referendum for reducing the Parliament size to a maximum of 300 seats. However, it was never implemented and in fact, the number of the seats increased to nearly 600.

This article shows a Europe chart about number of representatives per million people. Romania has indeed one of the largest index (29) in Europe.

Question: is there an official recommendation for number of representatives in an European democratic country (e.g. EU country)?

I am thinking of something like Venice Commission type of recommendation.

This study suggests that an optimal number of representative might exist:

Having too few members of parliament means parliament is likely to be un-representative, but it seems that having too many makes it easy for vested interests to buy influence. Simple logic suggests that the optimal number of MEPs should be proportional to the square root of the population. Empirical work suggests that nations with a much higher number of MEPs tend to be plagued by red-tape and corruption.

Alexei
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    Possible duplicate of Is there an optimal size of a parliament? – Bobson Jul 18 '17 at 17:07
  • @notstoreboughtdirt - I have narrowed down to Europe to make the question more answerable. Also, referenced data include European countries only, so it makes sense to include only these countries. – Alexei Jul 18 '17 at 17:36
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    @Bobson - although the question is very similar, I have narrowed my question to Europe only and I am interested in an official recommendation, not an abstract optimal size (ratio). – Alexei Jul 18 '17 at 17:40
  • "This study suggests that an optimal number of representative might exist" We know that an optimal number must exist, as 1 is too few and the entire population is too many. – eyeballfrog Jul 18 '17 at 19:34

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In the absence of an 'official' body to make recommendations, I would have to say "no".

The UN is pro-democracy, and the EU makes it a condition of membership, but both refrain from making recommendations about exactly which form that democracy should take.

jacksonj04
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  • What about Venice_Commission?[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_Commission]. It seems to deal with Codes of good practice on elections, on referendums and on political parties. Or it cannot be considered "official"? – Alexei Jul 19 '17 at 15:53
  • The closest the Venice Commission comes is probably in the Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters, where they do explicitly state things like elections should be equal (in the sense that no individual or area is left disenfranchised or under/over-represented), and that distribution of seats should be regularly reviewed, but it makes no recommendations as to the actual size of the representative body. – jacksonj04 Jul 20 '17 at 16:10