  Primary law of the European Union demands that the allocation of the seats of
the European Parliament between the Member States must obey the principle of
degressive proportionality. The principle embodies the political aim that the
more populous states agree to be underrepresented in order to allow the less
populous states to be better represented. This paper reviews four allocation
methods achieving this goal: the Cambridge Compromise, the Power Compromise,
the Modified Cambridge Compromise, and the 0.5-DPL Method. After a year of
committee deliberations, Parliament decreed on 7 February 2018 an allocation of
seats for the 2019 elections that realizes degressive proportionality, but
otherwise lacks methodological grounding. The allocation emerged from haggling
and bargaining behind closed doors.
