Decision making processes in the EU

January 6th, 2009
  • I would like to understand wich is the foresseable future of the decision-making processes in the EU as regards to: - new entrants (10 states + 3) and their impacts on the length of the decisions in the EU - which major changes did introduce the European Constitution as regards the decision-making processes - the impacts of the popular consultations in France and in Holland on the decision-making processes in the EU - possible solutions to reduce decision-making time and reduce the unanimity rule in the EU


  • First, let me explain the background of the EU. In 1950 Robert Schuman (minister of foreign affairs in France) came up with the idea of starting a new alliance to prevent an other world war from happening. It started with 6 countries: Holland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, France and Luxembourg. The use of veto's was acceptable and because of the small amount of members, it was possible. 23 years later, 1973, the first expansion came: Ireland, Denmark and the UK. 1981 Greece. Spain and Portugal in 1986, Austria, Sweden and Finland in 1995. At this point EU consisted of 15 countries and the way it worked when the EU was small was no longer applicable for the EU in this size. And now that the EU consists of 25 countries, it is not working. The constitution would change this. Most veto's will be gone and the decision process will change dramaticly. Instead of looking at the size of a country to determine the importance of the vote (right now it means that Germany and France can decide practically everything), EU gets an other system. To accept a proposal, at least 55% of the members need to approve it and those members must at least have 65% of the citizens. In this way, the bigger countries can't decide what is going on and the little countries can't unite to get everything they want. To keep managing the EU possible, these changes must be approved. But there are two options: Either the constitution is accepted or not. If it is accepted, this will be the biggest change in the decision making process and if it is rejected, the old way will be used indefinitely, causing decisions being slowed down. Apart from this, there is an other change. The countries that have had a referendum to let the people decide what to do, are thinking about using referendums more. In the future it is possible that the Europeans will go to the voting booth more often. The impact of the choice of Holland and France is difficult to predict, because the EU will make it's decision when all countries have given their vote. The Dutch politics realize now that the Dutch people are having a lot of trouble with some of the decisions made in the Europian parliament. For instance, Holland pays significantly more money to the EU than other countries. The 'No' against the constitution has changed a lot of minds in the Dutch politics. The official EU website is: http://europa.eu.int/







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