On Wednesday 22 October, the European Parliament approved by a narrow majority of 310 votes to 277, with 53 abstentions, the own-initiative report by Sandro Gozi MEP (Renew Europe, Italian), which calls on the Union to undertake genuine structural reforms to ensure successful enlargement (see EUROPE 13715/26).
During the debate on Tuesday 21 October, the MEPs reiterated the need to base progress in the candidate countries on merit, but above all to raise political awareness of the need to review the way the European treaties work.
Qualified majority voting should be extended to other areas, apart from so-called sovereign decisions, they argue, to avoid situations such as the Ukrainian application being blocked by Hungary’s veto alone (see EUROPE 13734/25).
In particular, the report recommends changing the European budget and its rule of 1% of the EU’s gross national income (GNI), reforming the composition of the European institutions and the rules of qualified majority voting to give “more weight” to the smallest member countries, and abandoning unanimity in the EU Council during the intermediate stages of the accession process for candidate countries (see EUROPE 13714/22).
MEPs are also calling on the European Council to act on Parliament’s activation of the ordinary institutional reform procedure provided for in Article 48 of the Treaty (see EUROPE 12968/17).
According to Parliament’s rapporteur for the text, enlargement is a “necessity”. “The unification of the EU and its reform must go hand in hand: every enlargement process has been preceded by reform”, said Mr Gozi. “The Union must adapt to the new dimension of an enlarged Europe, and it must be reformed from within”.
Last July, the Danish Minister for European Affairs, Marie Bjerre, admitted that the political will was not there to move forward with a revision of the European treaties.
“We do not have the necessary support from the Member States to begin institutional discussions”, she added (see EUROPE 13684/15).
Link to the text adopted: https://aeur.eu/f/j3f (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)