Eu law Lectures History of the eu

The *Council of the EU

It is a co-legislator when legislative procedure is being used. We have a ministers of MS. It really depends on what this council is doing at the moment. If the council is dealing with agriculture – agricultural ministry, if education then education ministry - . Another issue is that we can say that the whole decision-making within the EU is a by-product of myriad of different interest groups, MS , NGOs, diff political and social pressures are being put on the EU – their amalgamation is producing on what EU is doing. There are three distinct vectors- Representatives of MS(by the Council of the EU), Representative of EU itself as an institution, Representatives of society within with its functioning(Parliament). We have a conveyor belt with Presidents and PMs , we have subordinates of those members of the EUropean Council. The decisions flow on a conveyor belt , these are to be transmitted to the EU via the Council of the EU. They have a clear cut communication channel between the MS and EU.

Eg – Polish Politics – Polish-Hungarian Veto to the EU Budget – The Council of the EU is where it happens –

Veto is possible every time when there is a requirement of unanimous vote is required. Council along with parliament votes for the budget. There is a need for cooperation imbedded into organizational decision-making processes. At every step pf those procedures. Both national parliament and the council can block each other. They can‘t function without each so other so they end up in a deadlock of mutual block. They have to be in harmony otherwise they will be paralyzed.

There is an ongoing controversy with this council. EU is a bureaucratic model with huge bureaucracy operating with a detachment from the ordinary people. People accused EU of operating in a non-transparent manner and question their actions. Much has been done to remedy this.

However, the Council of the EU still can be improved. The meetings are not public, the decision-making process have different modes of voting , in practice these procedures are never used – usually a political deal is struck before it comes to voting. Hence it is a murky constitution . We don’t know why a certain decision is being undertaken due to lack of transparency. Only Council of the EU requires improvements. 3 modes of votes

1. 
   Plural majority – 51%
   
2. 
   Unanimous vote – eg Hungary and Poland
   
3. 
   Qualified Majority- Politically charged – there have been concerns about whether
   

EU would overturn into a certain dictator – Germany and France can exert too much power over small countries. We had large diff b/w bodies of MS – Germany – 3mil+ Lux 400K+ , People ended up with way large budget – we had major discrepancies. ( same problem with parliament) . There might be some safeguards to guarantee the rights of those smaller MS. They have to represented somehow otherwise they won’t be heard. However, there is no optimal solution. Voting is the qualified majority within the EU.

Double Majority – Treaty of Lisbon – At least 60% of the population of EU must be

60% of MS represent – 65% of the population

Reinforce Majority-

Weighted Vote – the previous system gave more emphasis to the no of states but less to amt of population. It represented had 75% MS representing only 62% of population.

You need fewer larger MS to reach this threshold – putting more emphasis on the no of MS gives preference to smaller MS becoz it would not be enough for few larger (France,Germany) for them to form the group , they will be above the population but not the no of states. We have contradictory interests – political int of small MS , We need to ensure a certain level of democratic voting . This is to be done to not destroy too much the democratic nature of the process.