Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images Parliament votes down plan for pan-European MEPs The European Parliament did vote to reduce its size post-Brexit from 751 to 705 members.

After months of intense negotiations and internal divisions, the European Parliament rejected by a large majority the creation of a new class of MEP representing a whole-EU constituency.

On Wednesday, MEPs voted by 368 in favor and 274 against an amendment to a report on the composition of the European Parliament that proposed to delete so-called transnational lists from a proposal to adapt the legislative post Brexit. It is a setback for French president Emmanuel Macron who promoted the change as a way to boost interest and voter turnout in EU elections.

The initial report, drafted by MEPs Danuta Hübner and Pedro Silva Pereira, called on the assembly to hold 46 of the 73 seats which will be lost after the U.K. departure in reserve for possible new class of MEPs representing pan-European constitutencies and for countries that might join the EU in the future.

MEPs however voted in favor of reducing from 751 to 705 the number of MEPs, with the remaining 27 (currently) British seats being redistributed amongst other member countries to compensate for existing biases in representation. The report had been approved by the Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee last month.

The proposal to set up transnational lists has faced opposition from the largest grouping, the European People's Party, and from several EU leaders who see the proposal as something that would further widen the gap between voters and their representatives. Smaller countries are suspicious because they feel it would likely benefit candidates from the EU's largest member nations.

“We’ve managed to build a sound and trustful democracy here in the European union, where there is an equilibrium and balance between majority and states,” said Paulo Rangel, a Portuguese MEP from the EPP in a debate prior to the vote. “If we are not a federation, why should we have a joint constituency that not even the federations have?”

Franck Proust, a French MEP also with EPP, paid tribute to the “good sense” of his colleagues after the vote, saying that transnational lists "are a false good idea which would have complicated the voting system and clearly kept the citizens further from their MEPs.”