Under the Lisbon Treaty, which first applied to the 2014 European Parliament election, the cap on the number of seats was raised to 750, with a maximum of 96 and a minimum of 6 seats per state. They continue to be distributed "degressively proportional" to the populations of the EU's member states.

Some scholars argue that the EU does not suffer from a democratic deficit as it is more constrained by its plural structure of checks and balances than any national polity. The EU is an intergovernmental institutional framework where democratically elected national governments bargain with each other.

The European Parliament welcomes large numbers of visitors across several locations, parliamentary visitor centres and museums. The visitor's offer of the EP is various and addressed to groups and individual visitors.

Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 705 members (MEPs), due to rise to 720 after the June 2024 European elections.