In order to comply with the Brexit requirement, on Monday 16 December the EU Council adopted a decision amending the EU Council's Rules of Procedure for the year 2020 on qualified majority voting.
In a qualified majority vote, the Member States constituting that majority must represent at least 65% of the population of the Union. In anticipation of the departure of 66,647,112 British - or 12.96% of the EU population - the weight of each Member State had to be reviewed.
The adopted decision therefore provides that, in the EU Council's Rules of Procedure for the coming year, both the figures concerning the population of the Union for the period from 1st January 2020 to the date on which the Treaties cease to apply in the United Kingdom and the figures for the period from the day following that on which the Treaties cease to apply in the United Kingdom to 31 December 2020 will be indicated.
Thus, the two most populous EU countries, Germany (82,940,663 inhabitants) and France (67,028,048 inhabitants), will represent 18.54% and 14.98% of the EU population respectively, compared to 16.13% and 13.04% before the British departure.
This decision will also apply to the European Atomic Energy Community.
See the decision: http://bit.ly/36D7Aaw (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki, intern)