Romania elected its members of the European Parliament for the first time on 25 November 2007; the election was initially scheduled for 13 May, but the PM postponed it for domestic political reasons. A referendum on a new voting system was held on the same day.
Romania joined the European Union on 1 January 2007, and was initially represented in the European Parliament by 35 observers as follows:
35 MEPs were appointed by Romania to serve as observers in the Parliament before the country joined in 2007. Since then up until the election, the observers served as full MEPs. The breakdown of parties and their European groupings was as follows:
The next election will be in 2009 and the number of seats will be reduced to 33.