Weighing up the Council votes

By the end of next week at the latest, a decision will be taken whether the double majority voting system agreed under the EU constitution will be up for renegotiation as part of talks on a new treaty.

For the German presidency of the EU, the issue seems to be out of the question, despite Polish Prime Minister Jaros?aw Kaczynski saying that his government was "ready to die" for the square-root system for allocating votes. Poland has support from the Czech Republic for a change to the system agreed under the constitution although Prague is not endorsing the square-root system.

A new analysis by Swedish diplomat Axel Moberg* explains why the Polish square-root system will not be accepted, but makes suggestions for a compromise solution if the voting system is part of the agenda for the intergovernmental conference which will agree changes to the existing treaties.

Moberg, who worked on the Nice treaty negotiations as a Swedish foreign ministry official, explains that the debate on voting weights has been driven by a concern by the large member states to win back the loss in voting power they have lost through the enlargements of the Union. He points out that, for example, France’s share of votes has fallen from around 25% in the original six-member European Community to about 8.4% in the EU27.

At Nice, the larger countries wanted a significant reweighting in their favour but did not get as much as they wanted. French President Jacque Chirac refused to give up parity in votes with Germany, whose population increased by nearly 20 million after reunification. Spain and Poland did well from the Nice treaty negotiations, getting 27 votes each compared to Germany’s 29 although Germany’s population at 82.4 million is more than double Poland’s (38.2m) and just under double that of Spain (43.8m). Moberg argues that by requiring decisions to have the support of 62% of the EU’s population Germany wins substantially more weight to block a decision than its 29 votes alone would suggest. He calculates that if the population criteria were converted into votes Germany has 41 potential votes to form a blocking minority compared to 27 for Spain.

The paper points out that the Convention on the future of Europe which produced the first draft of the treaty was not originally asked to address the issue of voting weights and did not set up a special working group to look into the matter as it did for questions such as common foreign and security policy.

Moberg argues that under the Convention system, which has been dubbed the double majority because it requires a majority of member states and population (55% and 65% in the final text), is "for all practical purposes" not a double majority system because the balance of power between member states is determined by the relative size of their population alone. Only the population criterion counts and, in a change from Nice, its application is compulsory rather than optional.

One of the main changes of the Constitution system is that the degressive traditional weighting of votes, where larger countries were underrepresented and smaller ones overrepresented, disappears. Member states’ votes are directly related to their population size. For example, the combined weight of the four larger states increases from 34% of the population to 54%. Germany’s weight doubles and while that of Spain and Poland increases a little with the disappearance of degressivity the gap with the large countries increases beyond the pre-Nice situation. "The weight of the medium-sized countries is reduced to around 60% and that of the smallest member states even more," according to the paper. Moberg believes that the double majority system would "eliminate the effects of the last enlargement and restore the large countries’ shares to around what they were in EU12.

In terms of forming blocking minorities, Moberg points out that the original proposal at Nice for a double majority system based on 50% of states and the population would have reduced the potential for forming a blocking minority for each of the large member states and three large member states would not have had a blocking minority in EU27. Medium-sized and smaller member states, on the other hand, lose 25% of their potential to form a blocking minority as the size of the blocking minority increases. This accounts, in large part, for Spain’s loss of voting power.

Turning to the square-root method for calculating member states’ votes favoured by Poland, Moberg says that the system would ensure "consistent and equal degressivity". Sweden presented a proposal based on the square-root system during the Nice negotiations but it was not accepted, "because some of the larger member states were hoping to get more", according to the study. He points out that ironically the final outcome at Nice was quite close to the square-root system in absolute numbers.

Moberg’s key assessment of the square-root system, however, is that the Polish model has a substantially lower threshold for achieving a majority. "This makes the proposals even less realistic because it would decrease the blocking potential of the large countries dramatically," he writes. While the square-root system and the Nice threshold give three large member states, including Germany, 99% of a blocking minority, under the Polish model they would only have 67% of the necessary minority. Moberg suggests that the prospects of getting agreement on the new system might be higher if the threshold were higher.

The paper explores a number of options for an allocation of votes which would be fairer and maintain a greater degree of degressivity including giving larger member states top-up votes. That would allow the population criteria to be scrapped while maintaining large countries’ potential to form a blocking minority in line with Nice. The precise method for re-allocation of votes would of course have to be haggled over if it is included in the IGC’s mandate and its endorsement would depend on the relative change in voting weights among larger states and also between larger states and medium-sized and smaller ones. What these other approaches have in common is that they would reduce the effect of giving the most voting power (in terms of forming blocking minorities) to the largest member state, Germany, which it has through the population criterion.

Looking to the future, Moberg doubts whether the double majority system, if it survives the coming IGC, would stand the test of further enlargement, not least as Turkey would become the country with the largest number of votes if it joined. More importantly, the blocking potential of the three largest countries could not be maintained if Turkey or the countries of the western Balkans joined the EU.

* Is the double majority really double? The second round in the debate of the voting rules in the EU Constitutional Treaty, Axel Moberg, Working Paper, Real Instituto Elcano, May 2007.

By the end of next week at the latest, a decision will be taken whether the double majority voting system agreed under the EU constitution will be up for renegotiation as part of talks on a new treaty.