Bridging qualified majority and unanimity decisionmaking in the EU

Abstract:

The European Union (EU) has tried to bridge decisionmaking by qualified majority and unanimity over the years by expanding qualified majorities (consensus) or by making unanimities easier to achieve. I call this decisionmaking procedure q-‘unanimity’ and trace its history from the Luxembourg Compromise to the Lisbon Treaty, and to more recent agreements. I analyze the most recent and explicit mechanism of this bridging (article 31(2) of the Lisbon Treaty) and identify one specific means by which the transformation of qualified majorities to unanimities is achieved: the reduction of precision of the decision, so that different behaviors can be covered by it. I provide empirical evidence of such a mechanism by analyzing legislative decisions. Finally, I argue that this bridging is a ubiquitous feature of EU institutions, used in treaties as well as in legislative decisionmaking.