Shifting strategies 1951–1986: ECSC, EEC, harmonisation, financial instruments, qualified majority voting

2010 ◽  
pp. 99-125
Author(s):  
Brian Bercusson
Keyword(s):  
Majority Voting ◽  
Financial Instruments ◽  
Qualified Majority

Aktuelle Entwicklungen in der EU-Sozialpolitik: effizientere Entscheidungsfindung durch Mehrheitsentscheidungen und differenzierte Integration?

IG ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Miriam Hartlapp
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Member State ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Qualified Majority ◽  
Differentiated Integration ◽  
Aktuelle Entwicklungen ◽  
Organizational Heterogeneity

Design and adoption of common social policy is conditional. Limited competencies, institutional and organizational heterogeneity among member states, and ideological-programmatic majorities in the institutions of the European Union (EU) have led to far fewer new legal instruments in recent decades. One of the key challenges is the unanimity requirement in the Council, enshrined in the Treaties in areas of great member state sovereignty. In 2019 the Commission proposed to allow a transition to qualified majority voting. This paper discusses what the transition entails in legal and procedural terms and highlights three key advantages it holds. To this aim it provides an overview of the policy areas and instruments that the Commission would like to transfer to qualified majority voting. It outlines how the potential that majority voting offers for EU social policy could be exploited better with more ambitious initiatives and discusses differentiated integration as an alternative.

Qualified Majority Voting

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan S. Felsenthal ◽  
Moshé Machover
Keyword(s):  
Majority Voting ◽  
Qualified Majority

Much Ado about Amsterdam: CDU-CSU Politics, Länder Influence and EU Treaty Reform

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Colette Mazzucelli
Keyword(s):  
Initial Section ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Conceptual Issue ◽  
Open Sea ◽  
Qualified Majority ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Treaty Reform

“Not a year goes by without some fresh blueprint being drawn up and fed into the continuing debate. Each succeeding blueprint can be likened to the way in which some artists go over their work again and again, gradually building up a deep richness to the emerging picture.”“Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter ‘repented,’ changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.”I. Introduction [1] The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of the legal and political dimensions of treaty reform in the European Union (EU). It raises a conceptual issue by addressing the conditions under which Chancellor Kohl yielded to an increase in subnational influence and the extent to which Länder (Federal State) politicians were able to exercise that influence to determine the outcome in a key area during the Amsterdam European Council, 16-18 June 1997. The initial section highlights a political and legal analysis of German politics and European treaty reform during the 1996 process. The second section explores emerging asymmetrical specificity on the German political and institutional landscape post-Maastricht. The closing section offers an explanation of the results in qualified majority voting (QMV) for the treaty provisions on freedom, security and justice at Amsterdam, and the implications for our understanding of treaty reform in the Union.

Explaining Brexit: How the City of London came to be Regulated by the European Union

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Vaubel
Keyword(s):  
Majority Voting ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Financial Market Regulation ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
European Court ◽  
Qualified Majority ◽  
Free Movement Of Goods ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

Abstract Qualified majority voting on financial market regulation was made possible by the European Court of Justice changing the meaning of the term “internal market” from “free movement of goods, services, persons and capital” to “conditions of competition which are not distorted”.

scholarly journals The Treaty of Nice and qualified majority voting

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan S. Felsenthal ◽  
Moshé Machover
Keyword(s):  
Majority Voting ◽  
Qualified Majority

scholarly journals Why Voting? A Welfare Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Drexl ◽  
Andreas Kleiner
Keyword(s):  
Decision Rule ◽  
Welfare Analysis ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Qualified Majority ◽  
Monetary Transfers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Common Objection ◽  
The Common ◽  
Strategy Proof

A committee decides collectively whether to accept a given proposal or to maintain the status quo. Committee members are privately informed about their valuations and monetary transfers are possible. According to which rule should the committee make its decision? We consider strategy-proof and anonymous mechanisms and solve for the decision rule that maximizes utilitarian welfare, which takes monetary transfers to an external agency explicitly into account. For regular distributions of preferences, we find that it is optimal to exclude monetary transfers and to decide by qualified majority voting. This sheds new light on the common objection that criticizes voting for its inefficiency. (JEL D71, D72, D82)

The Nice Treaty: Reforming European Union Institutions in Anticipation of Eastern Enlargements

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Finn Laursen
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Member State ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constitutional Treaty ◽  
Member States ◽  
Qualified Majority ◽  
The Future ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Year 2000

The Nice Treaty negotiated during the year 2000, signed in 2001 and in force from 2003, focused on institutional changes considered necessary, especially by the larger member states, for the anticipated large enlargement of the European Union with several central and eastern European countries. Efforts to adopt such changes in the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations in 1996–1997 had failed. The Nice Treaty therefore dealt with what was known as the “Amsterdam leftovers,” namely size and composition of the European Commission, reweighting of votes in the Council of Ministers, and increased use of qualified majority voting in the Council. Concerning the reweighting of votes the intergovernmental conference agreed to increase the number of votes per member state, but the larger member states got a relatively larger increase that the smaller member states. This should make it more difficult for the smaller member states to dominate in the future, something feared by the larger states. Concerning the Commission, it was decided that each member state would nominate one commissioner in the future from January 1, 2005. When the membership of the union reached 27 the size would have to be reduced. How much and how would be decided later. Concerning the use of qualified majority voting the decision was to extend the use to some policy areas from the entry into force of the new treaty and for some policy areas considered more controversial the extension would take place later. For the most controversial areas no extension to qualified majority voting was considered. During the intergovernmental conference, which negotiated the new treaty, the topic of “enhanced cooperation” was added. Most of these topics were quite controversial, and afterward there was a feeling that the treaty did not adequately deal with all the issues. This in turn led to further efforts to improve the institutions, first in the failed Constitutional Treaty (2004) and eventually in the successful Lisbon Treaty (2007).

scholarly journals Legislative Activity and Gridlock in the European Union

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Crombez ◽  
Simon Hix
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Legislative Procedures ◽  
Qualified Majority ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Legislative Activity

This article develops a game-theoretical model of European Union (EU) policy making that suggests that the amount of legislative activity depends on the size of the gridlock interval. This is consistent with Krehbiel's study of US politics. This interval depends on two factors: (1) the preference configuration of the political actors and (2) the legislative procedures used in a particular period. Actors’ preferences and procedures are not expected to have any effect beyond their impact on the gridlock interval. The study predicts smaller gridlock intervals, and thus more legislative activity, under the co-decision (consultation) procedure when the pivotal member states and the European Parliament (Commission) are closer to each other. More activity is expected under qualified majority voting in the Council than under unanimity. The results find support for these propositions in an empirical analysis of EU legislative activity between 1979 and 2009.

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