Saturday 1 April 2017 marks the end of the period during which member states may ask for the old qualified majority voting rule to be used at the Council of the EU.
This definitively sets the seal on the 'double majority' system laid down in the Treaty of Lisbon. It is deemed to favour the four largest member states and its use is not without imperfections, according to some commentators.
Since 1 November 2014, the new 'double majority' rule has applied by default to calculate the qualified majority at the European Council and the Council of the EU. Under this rule, in order for a proposal by the European Commission or High Representative of the EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to be adopted, 55% of the member states (or 16 out of 28) representing at least 65% of the total population must vote in favour.
Up until 31 March, member states could ask for the old qualified majority rule to be used, under a transitional period, which also allowed the "Ioannina compromise" to stay in place. The old weighting rule gave each member state a number of votes in line with the treaties, the weighting of which broadly reflected the size of its population. This interim solution was born of a compromise reached after the tense negotiations on the Lisbon Treaty (see EUROPE 9453).
The member state most steadfastly opposed to the new 'double majority' system was Poland, then governed by the Kaczyński twins – one of whom (Lech) served as president and the other (Jarosław) prime minister. The reason for this position was mainly the fact that the main beneficiaries of the change were Germany (the relative weight of its vote rose from 8% to 16%), France (8% to 13%), the UK (8% to 12 or 13%) and Italy (8% to 12%). Poland gained nothing.
A system that will never have been used
During the course of the transitional period between the two voting systems, the old qualified majority rule has never once been used.
This is not for want of trying. Several member states have attempted to use it, but always without success. The most recent example was on 28 February 2017, in the vote on the political agreement at the Council on the post-2020 ETS (see EUROPE 11735, 11741). And once again, Poland was at the centre.
The story of this vote still sticks in the Polish government's craw. Believing that it could rally a blocking minority under the old rule, its minister asked the Maltese Presidency of the Council to vote under the old system, pointing out that the transitional period was still in force.
The request was turned down due to a different interpretation of the rules on the part of the legal staff of the Council, which considered that it was an option only for votes to approve legislative acts, not when the Council is setting its informal negotiating position (general orientation) in order to initiate talks with the European Parliament.
This example illustrates a potentially broader problem with the EU's ordinary legislative procedure as laid down by the Lisbon Treaty (co-decision). One diplomat recently pointed out that the vast majority of draft legislative acts first went through the Council via a first reading, the stage before informal inter-institutional negotiations (trilogues).
Before the Lisbon Treaty, however, important texts were always adopted at second reading, unlike current usual practice. Are there grounds to review this procedure, which seems to have been devised in such a way as never to be fully applied, the diplomat asked. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)