Members of European Parliament take part in a voting session at the European Parliament on July 4 | Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images European Parliament backs (modest) electoral reform changes Changes include internet voting and tougher penalties for those who vote in more than one country.

STRASBOURG — Members of the European Parliament on Wednesday backed changes to the rules governing European elections — but the reforms were a long way from the ambitious plans that many lawmakers had hoped for.

At the end of more than two years of tricky negotiations with EU member countries, MEPs voted by 397 votes to 207 in favor of the changes, with 62 abstentions. Some of the proposals will be in place in time for next year's election.

They agreed to allow internet voting, allow EU citizens to vote from non-EU countries, and put in place tough penalties for those who vote in more than one country. They also agreed to put names and logos of EU political parties next to national ones on the ballot paper, but only on a voluntary basis.

There was also success for Germany and Spain which, unlike most other EU countries, don't have mandatory thresholds of votes in EU elections but will now be able to introduce a limit of between 2 and 2.5 percent. Berlin had lobbied hard for electoral thresholds despite a 2014 German court ruling which declared them unconstitutional.

The reform is “a big achievement for the European Parliament,” said Danuta Hübner of the European People's Party. “It will make the elections more accessible for millions of citizens and make their preparations and conduct more transparent.”

“The new law will provide citizens with more options to take part in the European elections,” she added.

But several measures on a list of more ambitious proposals that MEPs had drawn up in 2015 were missing from the agreement, including a formal adoption of the Spitzenkandidat system — in which European parties choose a lead candidate and the winner gets to be Commission president — and transnational lists. The mandatory threshold of votes was narrowly approved by the Council.

The Parliament itself had rejected transnational lists in February, a setback for French President Emmanuel Macron who promoted the change as a way to boost interest and voter turnout in EU elections, and the Council insisted it was not keen to promote the lead candidate process. In February, leaders of the 27 countries that will remain in the EU after Brexit rebuffed any guarantee of victory for a nominee from the Spitzenkandidat process, which was first used in 2014 in the election of Jean-Claude Juncker.

The watering down of updates to the 1976 EU electoral law was blamed by many on the member countries.

“The Parliament has been angry at the Council for taking so much time to come to an agreement,” said a Parliament official who didn't want to be named. “Many were furious that the Council did not go further with the bold proposals made by the European Parliament.

The more federalist members of the liberal ALDE voted down the reforms because they had "fought for a more ambitious text with transnational lists,” the Parliament official said. The left-wing GUE/NGL group and the Greens said they were against the threshold proposal, and the conservative European Conservatives and Reformists were split.

"This is clear gerrymandering at the European level, and I'm urging MEPs to reject the proposals,” said Morten Messerschmidt, a Danish member of the ECR. “If establishment parties are worried about losing seats they should come up with policies that voters actually want, rather than manipulating European election rules at the expense of their political rivals.”

In 2015, the European Parliament was given the power to draw up a proposal to “revive European democracy” and "enhance the democratic and transnational dimension of the European elections.” Agreement was reached with the Council last week, ending more than two years of discussions overseen by five rotating EU presidencies.

The proposals will now need official sign-off from the Council and ratification by national parliaments.