Europe’s Veto’s Power: Britain, France, the United States, and the Reform of the UN Security Council

The rapid rise of the emerging powers in the past decade had shaken the international global order and raised many questions regarding the new forms and institutions of global governance. The composition of the United Nations Security Council, and in particular that of its permanent membership, was then widely seen as problematic. The permanent membership reflected more the world order of 1945 than of 2011. Europe — with France and the United Kingdom occupying two of the five permanent seats — was heavily over-represented, while such important rising powers as India and Brazil could at best hope to be elected members for two years at a time. At the same time, Europe was also under-represented in the Council, as other member states of the European Union, such as Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland have to wait for their chance to serve as nonpermanent members. Nor was the European Union able to inject common positions into the deliberations of the Council.

Security Council reform had been on the agenda of the United Nations since the early 1990s, and despite repeated failures to secure a more representative Council membership, the issue would not go away. If reform did not happen soon, its declining legitimacy would effect the ability of the Council to assume its responsibilities at the apex of the United Nations.

This paper argued that France and the United Kingdom should jointly initiate an effort to re-form the Council, with the twin objectives to broaden the permanent membership and to consolidate the European role in the Council into one seat. This seat would by co-managed by France and the United Kingdom, but represented the common European position. This process of European consolidation would enable Europe to offer one of its two seats to one of the rising powers and thus challenge other member states of the United Nations to accept a thorough restructuring of the Council. Such an initiative would considerably strengthen the credibility and influence of France and the United Kingdom, and also that of the EU as a whole.