European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002
The Act divided the United Kingdom into various regions to which were allocated a number of seats.Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each constituted a single region, with 8, 5 and 3 seats respectively.For the first time the Act allowed the participation of Gibraltar, which was placed within the South West England region for the purpose of the elections.The legal provisions for the appointment of "Regional returning officers" and also the twelve European Parliamentary Regional constituencies areas of the United Kingdom under this Act were also used under the titles of "Regional counting officers" and "Regional count areas" in the legislation enacted for the holding of both the 2011 AV Referendum under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and the 2016 EU Referendum under the European Union Referendum Act 2015.As a result of the referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union on 23 June 2016, the act was repealed by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018,[1] however initially it was only partially repealed and was not fully repealed until 31 January 2020 when the United Kingdom formally left the European Union.