Enhanced cooperation

It is further distinct from Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification and permanent acquis suspensions, whose lifting is conditional on meeting certain benchmarks by the affected member states.

[7] It is designed to overcome paralysis, where a proposal is blocked by the veto of an individual state or a small group who do not wish to be part of the initiative.

For instance, the member states are automatically authorized to initiate an enhanced cooperation as soon as Ireland opt out; no separate decision has to be made in the Council.

[12] Furthermore, the Schengen acquis forms an integral part of the Union law that every acceding member state has to adopt,[13] reflecting the provisions on enhanced cooperations in force before the Treaty of Nice.

In July 2008 nine member states put forward a proposal to use enhanced cooperation: Austria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia and Spain.

[23] Greece's participation was approved by the commission on 27 January 2014, making them the 16th member state to join the regulation, which applied to it as of 29 July 2015.

Towards the end of 2010, twelve states[29] proposed enhanced cooperation to work around disagreements with Italy and Spain over what languages a European patent would be translated into.

The UPC agreement has been signed by 25 EU member states, including all states participating in the enhanced cooperation measures except Poland; while Italy, on the other hand, signed the UPC agreement prior to joining the enhanced cooperation measures for a unitary patent.

[48] This was done under TFEU Article 86, which allows for a simplified enhanced cooperation procedure which does not require authorization from the council to proceed.

[60][61][62] On 5 June 2024 Sweden notified its request to participate in the EPPO to the Council of Ministers and the EU Commission, which was approved on 16 July 2024.

[65] Nine states (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) signed a letter in February 2012 requesting that a FTT be implemented.

[68] In October 2012, after discussions failed to establish unanimous support for an EU-wide FTT, the European Commission proposed that the use of enhanced cooperation should be permitted to implement the tax in the states which wished to participate.

[69][70] The proposal, supported by 11 EU member states (Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain), was approved in the European Parliament in December 2012[71] and the Council in January 2013.

[5] On 14 February, the European Commission put forward a revised proposal for the details of the FTT to be enacted under enhanced cooperation.

[72][74] The legal service of the Council of the European Union concluded in September 2013, that the European Commission's proposal would not tax "systemic risk" activities but only healthy activities, and that it was incompatible with the EU treaty on several grounds while also being illegal because of "exceeding member states' jurisdiction for taxation under the norms of international customary law".

[75] The Financial Transaction Tax can no longer be blocked by the Council of the European Union on legal grounds, but each individual EU member state is still entitled to launch legal complaints against a finally approved FTT to the European Court of Justice, potentially annulling the scheme.

[77] With negotiations ongoing into 2016, Estonia formally withdrew from the FTT enhanced cooperation procedure on 16 March 2016, leaving 10 participating states.

The Treaty of Lisbon added the possibility for "those Member States whose military capabilities fulfill higher criteria and which have made more binding commitments to one another in this area with a view to the most demanding missions [to] establish permanent structured cooperation within the Union framework".

The Council then adopts, by qualified majority a decision establishing permanent structured cooperation and determining the list of participating Member States.

[80] The criteria established in the PSCD Protocol are the following:[80] On 7 September 2017 an agreement was made between EU foreign affairs ministers to move forward with PESCO with 10 initial projects.

Ireland and Portugal notified the High Representative and the Council of the European Union of their desire to join PESCO on 7 December 2017.

[85] Denmark did not originally participate as it had an opt-out from the Common Security and Defence Policy, nor did the United Kingdom, which withdrew from the EU in 2020.

Rather, the method's effectiveness relies on a form of peer pressure and naming and shaming, as no member state wants to be seen as the worst in a given policy area.

The Euro Plus Pact is an arrangement for cooperating in economic measures adopted on 25 March 2011 by the European Council through the Open Method of Coordination and includes as participants the Eurozone member states, plus Bulgaria, Denmark, Poland and Romania.

The Prüm Convention, a treaty for cooperation in criminal matters signed on 27 May 2005 by Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium, was adopted outside of EU structures, but it asserts European Union law takes precedence over its provisions (if they are incompatible) and that it is open to accession for any member state of the EU.

According to the text of the treaty, the ESM is open to accession by any EU member state once their derogation from using the euro has been lifted by the Council of the European Union.

[114] In June 2015, an updated EMU reform plan envisaged ESM should be transposed from being an intergovernmental agreement to become fully integrated into EU framework law in the medium-term (between July 2017 and 2025).

[117] Two non-eurozone member states, Denmark and Romania, have declared their intent to be bound by the fiscal provisions in the treaty (titles III and IV) upon ratification, and Bulgaria declared themselves bound by parts of these provision, while for the remaining non-eurozone states they will only apply from the date they adopt the euro.

After two regulations utilising enhanced cooperation to establish a European Union patent of unitary effect were approved for 25 participating states (all but Italy, Spain and Croatia, which subsequently acceded to the EU in July 2013) by the European Parliament on 11 December 2012[33][120] the documents were formally adopted as regulation E.U.

The ECB governing council decided on 24 June 2020 to establish a close cooperation agreement with the Bulgarian and Croatian central banks.