Lisbon Treaty: Council and Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) and role of the Council

Article 9 C [16] [new article] presented and discussed below

1. The Council shall, jointly with the European Parliament, exercise legislative and budgetary functions. It shall carry out policy-making and coordinating functions as laid down in the Treaties.

2. The Council shall consist of a representative of each Member State at ministerial level, who may commit the government of the Member State in question and cast its vote.

3. The Council shall act by a qualified majority except where the Treaties provide otherwise.

4. As from 1 November 2014, a qualified majority shall be defined as at least 55 % of the members of the Council, comprising at least fifteen of them and representing Member States comprising at least 65 % of the population of the Union.

A blocking minority must include at least four Council members, failing which the qualified majority shall be deemed attained.

5. The transitional provisions relating to the definition of the qualified majority which shall be applicable until 31 October 2014 and those which shall be applicable from 1 November 2014 to 31 March 2017 are laid down in the Protocol on transitional provisions.

6. The Council shall meet in different configurations, the list of which shall be adopted in accordance with Article 201b [236] of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

The General Affairs Council shall ensure consistency in the work of the different Council configurations. It shall prepare and ensure the follow-up to meetings of the European Council, in liaison with the President of the European Council and the Commission.

The Foreign Affairs Council shall elaborate the Union's external action on the basis of strategic guidelines laid down by the European Council and ensure that the Union's action is consistent.

7. A Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Governments of the Member States shall be responsible for preparing the work of the Council.

8. The Council shall meet in public when it deliberates and votes on a draft legislative act. To this end, each Council meeting shall be divided into two parts, dealing respectively with deliberations on Union legislative acts and non-legislative activities.

9. The Presidency of Council configurations, other than that of Foreign Affairs, shall be held by Member State representatives in the Council on the basis of equal rotation.

YES: Under the new system of ‘double majority' voting introduced by the Treaty, any qualified majority requires both a clear majority of States (55 per cent, i.e. at present at least 15 Member States), representing 65 per cent of the Union's population.  It does not amount to a halving of Ireland's vote. (Fianna Fail) It makes the EU decision-making process more efficient (Irish Alliance for Europe).

NO : This is a power-grab by the big Member States for control of the post-Lisbon Union.  By basing EU law-making primarily on population size, Lisbon would double Germany's weighting on the EU Council of Ministers from 8% now to 17%. France's weighting would go from 8%  to 13%, Britain's and Italy's from  8%   to 12% each,  while  Ireland's would be more than halved from 2% to 0.8%. (National Platform on EU Research and Information Centre, Sinn Fein and Lilbertas).

Commentary : It is not true that Ireland's voting weight will halve. The QMV system involves a double mechanism. On the population basis, yes, Ireland's weight will halve, but this is compensated for, in part, by Ireland having an equal voting strength with all other Member States by the other criteria, requiring 55 per cent of Member States to approve of any measure. On the whole, this is fair and Ireland's voting weight significantly exceeds its population proportion.
However, the Council remains the central institution of the Union and will continue to meet in secret, except when it operates in its formal legislative role. Even when it does operate in its formal legislative role, almost certainly in all or most instances, the compromises and deals will have been done in secret. This hugely compromises the democratic character of the EU, for it means that the most powerful body remains largely unaccountable. It is better than it was but only marginally so.