German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called for eliminating the European Union’s unanimous vote principle in the areas of foreign and security policy and replacing it with the majority vote principle seen in democracies.
Sounds like a bad idea. Maybe something like 90% instead of 100%? That still prevents solo vetoes like hungary but doesnt make it so easy to completely destroy the EU from the inside.
As far as I understand it, an idea proposed by many is qualified majority voting where a decision can be made by 55% of member states with 65% of EU population. Didn’t read the article yet so I don’t know if there was something else mentioned.
Found this source for further information on how qualified majority voting works: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/how-does-the-council-vote/qualified-majority/
unanimous
This means complete agreement by all members of a vote. So if they werent actually talking about 100% then they just misused the word unanimous.
A quick search of the query “EU unanimous” gave me this. There are a lot of EU bodies that work in various ways so it can get confusing.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/how-does-the-council-vote/unanimity/
You are right. They want to get rid off unanimous voting. It would be replaced by qualified majority voting (QMV) which the other post refers to.
Oh i think i misunderstood the previous comment, thx.
But to apply this approach you need an unanimous agreement :)
This is the exact situation the US Confederation was in before they became the United States. The solution was that the vote on dropping the veto had to reach a qualified majority that would form a coalition of the willing and move forward without the opposition. In case of the USA the opposing states joined later. We could do the same.
I can see good arguments on both sides. On one hand, the current mechanic hands every member state a veto on everything. On the other, if too many members get dragged into domestically unpopular adventures by a foreign majority, other countries will withdraw, either formally or by simply refusing to participate in Brussels.
Then again, given that one of the
Heritage Foundation’s(ahem) “Trump Administration’s” stated goals is to dismantle the EU, perhaps Merz’s government are simply useful idiotsAs a European federalist I can assure you that we need to get rid off the veto. The USA became the United States in the one moment they dropped the veto.
After Brexit no European nation that wants to keep their sovereignty will leave the union. I can highly recommend reading Timothy Snyders „The Road to Unfreedom“ on that topic: The EU is a group of failed empires (FR, ES, IT, PT, DE etc.) and nation states that are too small to exist without being absorbed or controlled by larger empires (especially eastern Europe) if they don’t stay together.
Thus even if the EU becomes more integrated it will the lesser evil.
Not sure what you’re saying about US vetos
Even a broken clock…
Do we have any examples where one nation vetoed something and it was good?
Like the opposite of Hungary using a veto to block Ukraine aid. Like Finland using the veto to prevent Sweden from exporting surströmming or some such thing
