Voting in the Council of the European Union

This move, first proposed in the Constitution, is based on the size of populations and, at the same time, acknowledges the smaller member states' fears of being overruled by the larger countries.

Article 238 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union[3] states the conditions for a reinforced qualified majority,[4] when acting on a proposal from neither the Commission nor the High Representative, effective since 1 November 2014: In practice, the Council targeted unanimous decisions, and qualified majority voting was often simply used as a means to pressure compromises for consensus.

These opposing votes were cast twice by Luxembourg and once by each of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Netherlands, and Portugal.

The Lisbon Treaty specifies in Article 16[6] that the Council shall act by a qualified majority voting (QMV)[7] in areas of competence[8] with certain exceptions.

Qualified majority voting now extends to policy areas that required unanimity according to the Nice Treaty.

The new areas of QMV are:[9] This section presents the former qualified majority voting systems employed in the Council of the European Union, and its predecessor institutions.

Whenever the community was enlarged, voting weights for new members were defined and thresholds re-adjusted by accession treaties.

[15] While this treaty transferred some policy areas subject to unanimity to qualified majority, it neither changed the voting weights nor the thresholds.

During a temporary period that extended to 1 November 2004, the old pre-Nice voting system was kept, but adapted to the new number of member states.

After the accession of Croatia, on 1 July 2013, at least 260 votes out of a total of 352 by at least 15 member states were required for legislation to be adopted by qualified majority.

The Czech Republic supported this method to some extent, but has warned it would not back a Polish veto on this matter.

According to the proposal, the requirement for an act to pass in the Council was: Certain policy fields remain subject to unanimity in whole or in part, such as: Article 311 shall be repealed.

The European Council may, on the initiative of the Member State concerned, adopt a decision amending the status, with regard to the Union, of a Danish, French or Netherlands country or territory referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2.