Qualified Majority Voting And The `Community Method'

That distinguishes the EU from other international organisations is the genuine pooling of sovereignty over many decisions through…

That distinguishes the EU from other international organisations is the genuine pooling of sovereignty over many decisions through the use of a form of majority voting - in essence a willingness occasionally to be on the losing side of an argument.

That's not easy for a sovereign state. It requires trust and structures of checks and balances which militate against domination by any one state or group of states.

The EU does it in most of its decisions in the First Pillar (see other panel) using the "community method", a combination of what is known as qualified majority voting (QMV) and a role for an independent arbiter of the common good, the Commission. Or that's the theory!

Member states in the Council of Ministers are allocated votes on the basis of their size - the big four, Germany, France, Italy and the UK, with ten votes each; eight for Spain; five for Belgium, Netherlands, Greece and Portugal; four for Sweden and Austria; three for Ireland, Finland and Denmark; one for Luxembourg.

READ MORE

The total number of votes is thus 87 while the rules of the Council define a qualified majority as 62. A decision must thus have very wide support to win a majority. Ten years ago 6 small nations with 12 per cent of the EU population were enough to form a blocking minority, today it takes seven counties with 14 per cent of the population.

And to protect the legitimate interests of minorities the Commission is given the "sole right of initiative" at meetings - although the Commission has no vote, only it can table a proposal. It must not make a proposal which it views as a threat to the collective good even if it might have the support of a majority.

Negotiations in the Council consist in trying to come up with a proposal acceptable to a majority and which the Commission is willing to propose.

A key Irish priority in the Amsterdam negotiations was to "preserve the institutional balance" , i.e. to ensure that the Commission's sole right was not undermined and that the influence of small states in the Council and Commision was not altered to their detriment.