The Double Majority Voting Rule of the EU Reform Treaty as a Democratic Ideal for an Enlarging Union : an Appraisal Using Voting Power Analysis

The Double Majority rule in the Treaty is claimed to be simpler, more transparent and more democratic than the existing rule. We examine these questions against the democratic ideal that the votes of all citizens in whatever member country should be of equal value using voting power analysis considering possible future enlargements involving candidate countries and then to a number of hypothetical future enlargements. We find the Double Majority rule to fails to measure up to the democratic ideal in all cases. We find the Jagiellonian compromise to be very close to this ideal.European Union ; Reform Treaty ; Nice Treaty ; Qualified Majority Voting ; Power Indices

A new balance of power in the Council? Yes, but not yet… CEPS Commentary, 19 December 2014

On the 1st of November, the double majority system established by the Lisbon Treaty for qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council entered into force. The shift in the balance of power, however, will not be effective before April 2017, given the possibility for member states to invoke the Nice rules until that date. While acknowledging that the new voting system in the Council promises to do away with the difficult negotiations of the past among member states to reallocate voting weights, this commentary finds that it is questionable whether it will achieve its ultimate aim to substantially improve democratic legitimacy and efficiency

Fair reweighting of the votes in the EU Council of Ministers and the choice of majority requirement for qualified majority voting during successive enlargements

This paper examines the system of Qualified Majority Voting, used by the Council of Ministers of the European Union, from the perspective of enlargement of the Union. It uses an approach based on power indices due to Penrose, Banzhaf and Coleman to make two analyses: (1) the question of the voting power of member countries from the point of view of fairness, and (2) the question of how the majority quota required for QMV should be determined. It studies two scenarios for change from 2005 onwards envisaged by the Nice Treaty: (1) no enlargement, the EU comprising 15 member countries, and (2) full enlargement to 27 members by the accession of all the present twelve candidates. The proposal is made that fair weights be determined algorithmically as a technical or routine matter as the membership changes. The analysis of how the quota affects power shows the trade-offs that countries face between their blocking power and the power of the Council to act. The main findings are: (1) that the weights laid down in the Nice Treaty are close to being fair, the only significant discrepancies being the under representation of Germany and Romania, and the over representation of Spain and Poland; (2) the majority quota required for a decision is set too high for the Council of Ministers to be an effective decision making body

Crossing the Bridge of Size: Reaching a Deal at Nice

The Intergovernmental Conference which should conclude at Nice in December 2000 deals with issues of institutional reform which must be resolved before proceeding with enlargement. There are four main questions. Should all countries be able to name a Member of the European Commission, or should the number of Commissioners be ‘capped’ at a number lower than the number of Member States? How should the weighting of Member States’ votes in the Council be adjusted to ensure that winning coalitions under qualified-majority voting represent an adequate proportion of the total EU population – as well as to ‘compensate’ those five Member States which lose their second Commissioner? How far should qualified-majority voting be extended? Should the conditions for ‘closer cooperation’ be relaxed to make it easier to press ahead with integration in particular areas without the participation of all Member States? A deal must be reached at Nice, but the IGC has revealed serious differences between the Member States. There is likely to be an agreement: for one Commissioner per Member State, probably with an internal hierarchy; a significant reweighting of votes in favour of the big Member States; a moderate extension of qualified-majority voting; and at least the removal of the veto regarding closer cooperation. Yet relative size has emerged as a source of frictions and concerns about long-term solidarity. The big countries fear being tied down. The smaller ones have long-term concerns about being dominated or absorbed, as well as presentational problems. If all the results of the IGC are seen as concessions to the large countries, it will be hard to sell the Nice Treaty at home – and Denmark has again shown that people can say No. Too much intergovernmentalism is not the answer. The Community institutions cannot do everything, but they have played an essential role in overcoming fears about relative power. They need to be renewed, not replaced

On the Weights of Nations: Assigning Voting Weights in a Heterogenous Union

Consider a voting procedure where countries, states, or districts comprising a union each elect representatives who then participate in later votes at the union level on their behalf. The countries, provinces, and states may vary in their populations and composition. If we wish to maximize the total expected utility of all agents in the union, how to weight the votes of the representatives of the different countries, states or districts at the union level? We provide a simple characterization of the efficient voting rule in terms of the weights assigned to different districts and the voting threshold (how large a qualified majority is needed to induce change versus the status quo). Next, in the context of a model of the correlation structure of agents preferences, we analyze how voting weights relate to the population size of a country. We then analyze the voting weights in Council of the European Union under the Nice Treaty and the recently proposed constitution, and contrast them under different versions of our model.

Council Decision Rules and European Union Constitutional Design

In the recent past, the choice of adequate voting weights and decision rules for the Council of the European Union (EU) has been a highly contested issue in EU intergovernmental negotiations. In general terms, the selection of a threshold for qualified majority votes (QMV) in the Council constitutes a trade-off in terms of decreased sovereignty for individual governments versus an increased collective ‘capacity to act’. This paper compares the effects of the proposal tabled by the Convention on the Future of Europe with the Nice Treaty provisions and the Lisbon Treaty, in terms of both the efficiency of decision-making and the distribution of relative voting power within the EU of twenty-seven member states. In addition, the paper shows how with the current size of EU membership, the EU risks being unable to reach intergovernmental agreement. Accordingly, a challenging issue for the future of the EU is to move towards reasonable provisions that allow its own constitution – if ever adopted – to get amended.Council of the European Union, decision rules, constitutional design, capacity to act, power indices

On the Weights of Nations: Assigning Voting Weights in a Heterogeneous Union

Consider a voting procedure where countries, states, or districts comprising a union each elect representatives who then participate in later votes at the union level on their behalf. The countries, provinces, and states may vary in their populations and composition. If we wish to maximize the total expected utility of all agents in the union, how to weight the votes of the representatives of the different countries, states or districts at the union level? We provide a simple characterization of the efficient voting rule in terms of the weights assigned to different districts and the voting threshold (how large a qualified majority is needed to induce change versus the status quo). Next, in the context of a model of the correlation structure of agents preferences, we analyze how voting weights relate to the population size of a country. We then analyze the voting weights in Council of the European Union under the Nice Treaty and the recently proposed constitution, and contrast them under different versions of our model, and compare them to the weights derived from poll data.Majority rule, Voting, Weighted voting, European Union

Negotiating the Lisbon Treaty : Redistribution, Efficiency and Power Indices

[Abstract] In this paper, we try to explain the intergovernmental negotiation of the Lisbon treaty from a rational choice perspective with the aid of power index analysis. There are two aspects of the reform of qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council that we find puzzling. The first one is that, according to Shapley-Shubik index based on the notion of power as the distribution of a fixed prize, small and medium-sized member states have lost power as compared to the Nice treaty, which conflicts with the unanimity requirement for treaty reform. The second one is that, according to the Banzhaf measure based on the notion of power as influence, the Lisbon treaty leaves all member states worse off in absolute terms as compared to the Convention’s draft. We propose the measure developed by Steunenberg et al. (1999) as a possible solution to these paradoxes, and draw some conclusions about the nature of EU policy making and power index analysis

On the Weights of Nations: Assigning Voting Weights in a Heterogenous Union

Consider a voting procedure where countries, states, or districts comprising a union each elect representatives who then participate in later votes at the union level on their behalf. The countries, provinces, and states may vary in their populations and composition. If we wish to maximize the total expected utility of all agents in the union, how to weight the votes of the representatives of the different countries, states or districts at the union level? We provide a simple characterization of the efficient voting rule in terms of the weights assigned to different districts and the voting threshold (how large a qualified majority is needed to induce change versus the status quo). Next, in the context of a model of the correlation structure of agents preferences, we analyze how voting weights relate to the population size of a country. We then analyze the voting weights in Council of the European Union under the Nice Treaty and the recently proposed constitution, and contrast them under different versions of our model

On the Weights of Nations: Assigning Voting Weights in a Heterogeneous Union

Consider a voting procedure where countries, states, or districts comprising a union each elect representatives who then participate in later votes at the union level on their behalf. The countries, provinces, and states may vary in their populations and composition. If we wish to maximize the total expected utility of all agents in the union, how to weight the votes of the representatives of the different countries, states or districts at the union level? We provide a simple characterization of the efficient voting rule in terms of the weights assigned to different districts and the voting threshold (how large a qualified� majority is needed to induce change versus the status quo). Next, in the context of a model of the correlation structure of agents preferences, we analyze how voting weights relate to the population size of a country. We then analyze the voting weights in Council of the European Union under the Nice Treaty and the recently proposed constitution, and contrast them under different versions of our model, and compare them to the weights derived from poll data