A simpler way of voting (engelsk)
Here you find an article about voting.
By Jens-Peter Bonde
Veteran MEP, spokesperson for the Danish JuneMovement and President for the Group for Independence and Democracy in the European Parliament
Jens-Peter Bonde has published a reader friendly edition of the proposed constitution for free download at euabc.com
Today only a very few citizens know how a law is decided in the European Union. Even ministers and EU specialised journalists don’t know as well.
The reason is quite simple. We don’t see the votes. Most votes by so-called qualified majority vote take place in 300 secret working groups under the Council of ministers.
And it is not even real votes as in a democratic system, since only the formal Council has the voting competence. Most votes are therefore calculations of what would happen if a law would be put to a vote in the Council.
When the civil servants know the possible result their ministers don’t need to vote. By consensus they can just decide what would otherwise have been the result of a vote.
For some 50 decisions a year the Council publish voting figures from the few real council votes. It is the derogation from the main rule, used for some countries to signal they were opposed to a piece of legislation.
To reach a decision we first need a proposal from a majority in the Commission. Non-elected commissioners still have the monopoly to propose. Barroso’s Commission have not voted one single time! Commission decisions are mainly produced by civil servants and decided in written procedures between the cabinets with other civil servants.
In the Council the calculation on possible votes and the 50 votes is based on voting weights. The biggest countries have 29 votes each. Small countries like Denmark and Ireland have 7. There are 345 votes together. You need 255 for QMV. It is 74 % of the weighted votes.
No one can remember the votes of everyone. The system is too complicated. The proposed constitution takes it from difficult to impossible by establishing the number of citizens as the main factor.
Then the Council shall negotiate the distribution based on size. Where do the 4 million Romanians living abroad belong? Where do we have citizens with dual citizenship? How do we count our citizens?
And who can remember the decided figures of population size and calculate when a decision has reached countries representing 65 % of the population – and 55 % of the countries.
The proposed “double majority” will make it more impossible for journalists to cover what is going on in the EU. We will miss the possibility for popular support for the necessary European cooperation.
May I propose a much simpler system: 75 % of the member states in the Council and simple majority in the European Parliament? Easy to calculate, easy to remember, easy to refer to in the medias.
And also more fair and efficient. The EU is not a state where citizens are equal. In normal international cooperation states are equal. In the Council each state ought to have one vote. Then, we can continue with the weighting after size in the European parliament where Germany has 99 members, Denmark 14, Ireland 13 and Malta 5.
It is not fair to have weightings both in the Council and the Parliament. Not even in federal states like the US they have double weighting. In the US senate each state has 2 votes independently of population.
Instead of working with different qualified majorities every member state could have a possibility of raising a veto if their prime minister is prepared to bring it to the heads of states in the European Council.
There, they can then negotiate a different solution or derogation. If the bigger member states fear that 75 % of the states will down vote countries with more than half of the population they could eventually have the right to raise a veto based on 50 % of the citizens in all EU.
I can’t imagine situations where 75 % of the states will down vote countries with 50 % of the population. Big member states could – much easier - also use the proposed veto possibility in the European Council. But I am not opposed to a 50 % rule since it will seldom/never be used and therefore it will not disturb the possibility to have a very simple voting system to be understood by everyone.
If member states insist on weighted votes in the Council it could also be possible to introduce a much simpler system: 6 for Germany, 5 for the other big nations, 4 for the medium sized, 3 and 2 for the smaller states and 1 for the smallest states. It is not as just as the Polish proposal on square root calculated numbers with 9 for Germany and 6 for Poland instead of 29 and 27 votes today – but it is much easier to work with and remember and it does not open annual battles on calculating size.
Today most laws are passed without voting in elected parliaments. The former German president, Roman Herzog, has commented we can hardly call EU member states for parliamentary democracies. Only a minority of our laws are now adopted by elected members of parliaments.
Why not use the coming negotiations to re-invent democracy in the EU: No law without a majority in an elected parliament. It may be the national parliaments or the European parliament.
Let us stop the practise with most laws being decided by civil servants in closed meetings in Brussels. Laws shall be passed in the open. It shall be possible to amend the laws after elections.
The core in democracy is the possibility to go for elections, have a new majority and then new laws. This democratic principle shall no longer be the derogation but the rule in EU.
