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Winners and Losers in the Council: Voting Power Consequences of EU Enlargements
Author(s) -
Raunio Tapio,
Wiberg Matti
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5965.00139
Subject(s) - resizing , voting , council of ministers , european union , member states , power (physics) , political science , member state , majority rule , political economy , public administration , law and economics , law , international trade , economics , politics , physics , quantum mechanics
Who will have power in the enlarged European Union? How will the enlargement of the EU alter the configuration of Member States’ a priori voting power in the Council of Ministers? One of the most controversial topics debated in the 1996‐97 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) was the need for institutional reform, namely how to make EU decision‐making more effective. An important dimension of institutional reform is the challenge posed by enlargement. The entry of several new countries will have considerable consequences for the functioning of EU institutions. This article analyses the distribution of voting power in the Council of Ministers under different majority requirements in an enlarged Union. The analysis shows how the enlargement weakens the influence of all Member States. The larger Member States will lose more than the others, relatively speaking. The more stringent the decision rule, the more power the smaller members have.