Attendance methodology

Attendance covers the plenary roll-call votes held in the last 180 days, counted back from the date of each data refresh. The window rolls forward with every refresh (at least weekly), so older sessions drop out as new ones are added. An MEP who joined during the window is measured only on the votes held since they took their seat.

The figure comes from the European Parliament's roll-call votes in plenary, via the HowTheyVote.eu open dataset of the Parliament's official results. Committee votes and votes by show of hands are not included, because the Parliament does not publish how each member voted in them.

A vote counts as present if the MEP voted For, Against or Abstain. Abstaining is an active choice made in the chamber, so it counts as present. A vote counts as absent if the MEP is recorded as not voting.

There is one attendance figure per MEP. It is calculated only from the Parliament's official records and is never adjusted by hand.

The President and Vice-Presidents don't vote while chairing a sitting. One who cast no roll-call vote in the window is shown as N/A; one who does vote gets a figure and is ranked like any other MEP. N/A is also shown for an MEP who was officially excused from at least 40% of the window's sittings and still falls below 50% on the remaining ones. An MEP who took their seat after the newest vote in the data has no figure yet (“Joined after the data cutoff, no votes yet”), not 0%.

Wherever the site gives an average attendance, it is the mean of the per-MEP attendance figures across ranked MEPs. Ranked MEPs are those with at least one roll-call vote in the window who are not officially excused and are not a President or Vice-President who cast no votes, the same set as the leaderboard. It is not a pooled votes-cast ÷ votes-held ratio.

Current EU average: 89% · mean across 718 ranked MEPs

Under Rule 162 of the Parliament's Rules of Procedure, a member can be excused from a sitting for illness, serious family reasons, an official Parliament mission, or pregnancy and maternity leave (the Parliament excuses three months before and six months after a birth). Each sitting's minutes list the members it excused, and the Parliament publishes the same list as had_excused_person in its Open Data record of each plenary sitting.

We credit an excused sitting by removing its votes from that member's count, so it is not counted as an absence. Only the Parliament's own record counts.

Occasionally the Parliament documents a leave period (for example maternity or parental leave) in an official document before it appears on the sitting's excused list. For that case we keep a small, reviewed override file. Every entry must cite an official document on europarl.europa.eu. Press reports, statements and hand-kept lists are not accepted there. An absence the Parliament has not recorded as excused counts as an absence, even if the press has reported a reason.

Sometimes a reason for an absence is public but not yet in the Parliament's record, for instance a member on maternity leave when the Parliament has no substitute or proxy vote. In that case we may show a short context note next to the attendance figure, such as “On maternity leave since Aug 2026 (Altinget EU, 17 Aug 2026)”.

• Every note must link to its source, with the source's name and publication date.
• Each note is reviewed by a person before publication. Dates are only as precise as the source (a month if the source gives a month).
• A note is labelled as context. It never changes the attendance figure, and there is no second or “adjusted” figure.

Only the Parliament can excuse a member. Once it records the leave, the affected sittings are credited in the usual way.

On every refresh we list every MEP who cast no roll-call vote on any sitting day of an entire plenary session in the window. A session is the sitting days of one Monday–Thursday week. Each entry records whether the Parliament excused those sittings and whether a context note exists.

Missing a whole session often has a reason, such as illness, leave or a mission, that the figure alone does not show. So these MEPs are kept out of bottom-of-ranking lists (such as the homepage Bottom 10) and journalist briefings until a person has reviewed the absence and recorded a clearance or a sourced context note. This only affects which MEPs we feature. Their attendance figure and their place in the full leaderboard are unchanged.

Current data: 6 plenary sessions · 157 MEPs missed at least one entire session

Under the attendance figure, each MEP page lists every plenary sitting day on which the MEP missed at least one roll-call vote, newest first. Each day shows either “missed all N votes” or “missed X of Y votes”, and whether the absence is Officially excused (on the Parliament's excused list for that sitting, or covered by an official Parliament leave record) or Not excused.

Each entry links to the Parliament's own record for that sitting: the attendance register and the results of roll-call votes annexed to the minutes on europarl.europa.eu. We link only to documents the Parliament lists for that sitting in its Open Data record. If a sitting's record could not be fetched, it gets no link rather than a guessed one. The list shows the days behind the figure. It is not a second figure.

Each MEP page lists the files in the 2024–2029 term on which the MEP was appointed to a rapporteur role, and the directory can be filtered to them. The list comes from the procedure records of the European Parliament Open Data Portal, which name each Member appointed to a file, their role, the committee and the appointment date.

• Rapporteur: writes the lead committee's report and negotiates it on the Parliament's behalf. Co-rapporteurs are listed as rapporteurs.
• Opinion rapporteur: writes the opinion of another committee that the lead committee takes into account.
• Shadow rapporteur: follows the report for their political group. The Parliament's data doesn't record a committee for shadow roles, so none is shown. Shadows on committee opinions are listed separately.

Only appointments in the current (10th) term are included, also on older files carried over from the previous term. Objections to delegated and implementing acts (Rule 115) and motions for resolutions are left out: the Parliament's data lists the Members who table them as rapporteurs, but they are not reports. The directory's Rapporteur filter covers MEPs with at least one rapporteur or opinion rapporteur appointment.

Caveat: the Parliament's data records when a Member was appointed, but not when they were replaced or stood down. A replaced rapporteur stays listed. So we show every role as “appointed” with its date and never call it current. Each file links to its Legislative Observatory (OEIL) procedure file, which is the authoritative record. The Parliament's profile pages list tabled documents rather than files, and include earlier terms, so their counts can differ.

Source: European Parliament Open Data Portal · licensed CC BY 4.0 · data as of 6 Oct 2026 · 756 files · refreshed daily

The current data is as of 6 Oct 2026 and covers roll-call votes from 9 Apr 2026. Votes come from HowTheyVote.eu's export of the Parliament's results. Excuses and sitting records come from the European Parliament Open Data Portal. Both are refreshed together, and every MEP page shows the same data date.

MEP pages list the questions each member has put to the Commission, the Council and other EU bodies in the 10th term. The records come from the European Parliament Open Data Portal (the parliamentary-questions API), published under CC BY 4.0, and are refreshed daily. Each question links to the Parliament's own copy of the question and, once published, of the answer.

What the total counts. The headline number is the written questions (E) and priority questions (P) on which the member is listed as an author. This is the same count as the “Written questions” tab of the member's profile on europarl.europa.eu. Oral questions and interpellations are shown on a separate line and are not part of the total.

Co-authored questions. A question tabled by several members counts once for each of them. It is never split between co-authors, and it is marked “co-authored with N”.

Publication lag. The Parliament publishes a question about one to two weeks after it is tabled, and answers usually follow weeks later. The newest questions may therefore be missing, and a question shown as “Awaiting answer” may already have been answered.

The number of questions is a record of activity, not a measure of quality or of a member's work. It is not ranked and plays no part in the attendance figure.

Questions data as of 6 Oct 2026 · newest question tabled 1 Oct 2026

What is listed. Each MEP page links to two kinds of document the member has filed with the European Parliament in the 10th term. The first is the member's declarations of participation in events organised by third parties, from the “Declarations” tab of their profile on europarl.europa.eu. We show the event date and a link to the declaration, with its enclosures (such as the event programme) underneath. The second is the member's entries in the register of gifts notified to the President, with the registration number and the date the gift was received.

Dates and links only. We don't copy who paid, what was covered, the organiser, the amounts, the donor or the description of a gift. The linked EP document is the authoritative record and gives these details. There are no counts, rankings or comparisons between members, and the section plays no part in the attendance figure. It is also separate from the outside income shown from the member's declaration of private interests.

Self-declared. The Parliament publishes what the member files. Under the Code of Conduct, a member declares participation in an event when a third party covers their travel, accommodation or subsistence, within 60 days of the event. Expenses covered by an EU institution or body, a national government or a political party are exempt. So having no declarations does not mean having attended no events, and a declaration can also be missing or filed late.

Names in the gifts register. The register names members rather than giving their EP id. We attach an entry to an MEP page only through a hand-checked list of names. An entry whose name is not on that list, for example a former member, is not shown on any page.

Source: European Parliament website (MEP declarations; Register of gifts), reproduced with the source acknowledged · refreshed weekly · declarations retrieved 30 Sept 2026 · register retrieved 30 Sept 2026

If you think a figure or an excuse status is wrong, or you are an MEP's office with a source for a context note, write to alex@wheresmymep.eu. We correct errors in the data. We don't change the calculation for individual MEPs.