An extra 15 MEPs will take up their seats in the European Parliament following next year’s EU elections, after governments struck a preliminary agreement on the size and shape of its composition, writes POLITICO.

The biggest winners are France, Spain and the Netherlands, as each of these countries will gain two MEPs, while the countries that will add one more are Austria, Belgium, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, Latvia, Ireland and Denmark, according to a document from the Council of the EU dated July 26. No country will lose any spots in the hemicycle.

The changes - which still need formal legal approval by the European Council and the Parliament itself - will take the number of seats from 705 to 720 between 2024 and 2029.

The Parliament - which doesn’t have the power to decide on its own composition alone - had sketched out a slightly different shape for itself, which would have brought the increase to only 716. In the negotiations between governments, France, Belgium and Poland won the arguments to add four seats for them on top of that.

Seats are distributed according to a calculation that takes account of changes in population size but also slightly over-represents the smallest EU member countries.