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The procedures for voting in the Council of the European Union are described in the treaties of the European Union. The Council of the European Union (or simply "Council" or "Council of Ministers") has had its voting procedure amended by subsequent treaties and currently operates on the system set forth in the Treaty of Lisbon. The system is known as qualified majority voting is a type of consociational democracy.
Current qualified majority voting rules (since 2014)
Article 16 of the Treaty on European Union,[1] as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, stipulates that the Council voting arrangements of the Nice Treaty applied until 31 October 2014.[a] Article 16 also states the conditions for a qualified majority, effective since 1 November 2014 (Lisbon rules):
- Majority of countries: 55% (comprising at least 15 of them), or 72% if acting on a proposal from neither the Commission nor the High Representative, and
- Majority of population: 65%.
A blocking minority requires—in addition to not meeting one of the two conditions above—that at least 4 countries (or, if not all countries participate in the vote, the minimum number of countries representing more than 35% of the population of the participating countries, plus one country) vote against the proposal. Thus, there may be cases where an act is passed, even though the population condition is not met. This precludes scenarios where 3 populous countries could block a decision favored by the other 24 countries.[2]
The Lisbon rules eradicated the use of "artificial" voting weights. This move, first proposed in the Constitution, is based on the size of populations and, at the same time, acknowledges the smaller member states' fears of being overruled by the larger countries.
Voting practice
In practice, the Council targeted unanimous decisions, and qualified majority voting was often simply used as a means to pressure compromises for consensus. For example, in 2008, 128 out of 147 Council decisions were unanimous. Within the remaining decisions, there was a total of 32 abstentions and 8 votes against the respective decision. These opposing votes were cast twice by Luxembourg and once by each of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Netherlands, and Portugal.[3]
Policy areas
The Council, jointly with the European Parliament, has policy-making, legislative and budgetary functions. The Council is composed of the ministers of member states responsible for a specific area of policy. The ministers or their representative will commit the government of the member state in questions of policy and cast the member state vote. The Lisbon Treaty specifies in Article 16[4] that the Council shall act by a qualified majority voting (QMV)[5] in areas of competence[6] with certain exceptions. Qualified majority voting now extends to policy areas that required unanimity according to the Nice Treaty.
The new areas of QMV are:[7]