§ Miss BeggTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on vote re-weighting in the European Union following the European Council at Nice. [142875]
§ Mr. Robin CookThe Nice IGC agreed that on 1 January 2005 member states' votes in the Council would be re-weighted according to the following table.
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Current weighting From 2005 Germany 10 29 UK 10 29 France 10 29 Italy 10 29 Spain 8 27 Poland — 27 Romania — 14 Netherlands — 13 Greece 5 12 Czech Republic — 12 Belgium 5 12 Hungary — 12 Portugal 5 12 Sweden 4 10 Bulgaria — 10 Austria 4 10 Slovakia — 7 Denmark 3 7 Finland 3 7
Current weighting From 2005 Lithuania — 7 Latvia — 4 Slovenia — 4 Estonia — 4 Cyprus — 4 Luxembourg 2 4 Malta — 3 Total 87 345 This is the first time that votes in the Council have been re-weighted and the effect that it will have on the UK's relative voting influence1 is set out as follows:
1 Relative voting influence is a measure of the fairness of a member state's vote weighting. It is calculated as the ratio between a member state's percentage of the total number of votes and its percentage of the EU's total population.The vote weighting system is a compromise between one vote per member state and an allocation of votes proportional to population size. Smaller member states are therefore proportionately over represented and have ratios above one. The reserve is true of larger member states.
The UK's relative voting influence Current voting system Nice agreement EU9 0.86 0.91 EU12 0.75 0.83 EU15 0.73 0.78 EU211 0.66 0.72 EU271 0.61 0.69 1 For the purposes of this calculation, EU21 includes Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus. EU27 then adds Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and Malta. Of course other scenarios for enlargement are equally possible Under the Nice agreement, the voting system will be supplemented by a population safeguard. When a decision is to be adopted by the Council by a qualified majority, a member of the Council may request verification that the member states constituting the majority represent at least 62 per cent. of the total population of the Union. If this condition is not met, the decision in question shall not be adopted.
The effect of these changes is to ensure that in an EU of 27, a decision cannot be passed in the Council where QMV applies if the three largest member states—Germany, the UK and France—are opposed.
The Nice agreement also stipulates that a majority of member states must support a qualified majority for a decision to be passed by QMV.