92000E3938

WRITTEN QUESTION E-3938/00

by Christopher Huhne (ELDR) to the Council

(20 December 2000)

Subject: Number of votes under QMV

1. Will the Council give the figures in each year for the last five years for the number of votes or decisions concerning legislation or other decisions which would, if voted upon, be subject to qualified majority voting?

2. What proportion of all decisions are now taken by QMV?

3. What proportion of legislative decisions are taken by QMV?

Reply

(27 September 2001)

The Council is not in possession of the figures for each of the last five years for the number of votes or decisions concerning legislation or other decisions which would, if voted upon, be subject to qualified majority voting.

Statistics were produced for 1999, but only on the number of legislative acts. Those statistics show that 67 out of the 199 legislative acts adopted by the Council in 1999 had a legal basis requiring adoption by unanimity. The remaining 132 acts adopted during that year had a legal basis enabling them to be adopted by a qualified majority, which represents a proportion of 66,3 %.

Of those 132 legislative acts:

- 104 were adopted without votes against or abstentions;

- 28 were adopted with votes against or abstentions.

104 of those 132 legislative acts were adopted unopposed. This means that 67 + 104 = 171 out of a total of 199 legislative acts were in fact adopted unopposed, which is about 85 %.

In this respect it should be remembered that qualified majority voting may in practice make it easier to obtain all delegations' agreement to a text, inasmuch as delegations which do not agree may be inclined to vote in favour once they know they are going to be in a minority. It also strengthens the Commission's power of amendment and may in addition favour the adoption of a different text from the one which would have been approved if the legal basis had required unanimity.

As from January 2001 the monthly summaries of Council acts include references to the voting procedure followed for the adoption of the acts by the Council (unanimity, qualified or simple majority). These monthly overviews are published on the Council's website (http://ue.eu.int, under Transparency and Summary of Council acts).