 At the previous election member states were granted a fixed allocation of seats for election as determined under the provisions of the Treaty of Nice (current allocation is in the 2007 column below).The admission of Bulgaria and Romania midway through the previous Parliament's term had increased the overall size of the assembly to 785, and under the terms of the Treaty of Nice it was mandated that the seat allocations be modified for this election, dropping 49 seats to keep the overall size of the Parliament down.It had been the stated desire of the member-state governments to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon before the election so that its articles governing the European Parliament could enter force as of this election.