92001E2893

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2893/01

by Jens-Peter Bonde (EDD) to the Council

(22 October 2001)

Subject: Annual number of votes in the Council

How many votes have been held in the Council every year?

Reply

(14 February 2002)

As a preliminary remark, the Council would like to draw the Honourable Member's attention to the fact that the General Secretariat of the Council draws up monthly summaries of Council acts which contain lists of legislative and non-legislative acts of the Council, including the results of votes, explanations of voting and statements for the minutes when the Council is acting in its legislative capacity within the meaning of Article 207(3) of the EC Treaty and Article 7 of its Rules of Procedure

As from January 2001 these monthly summaries also include references to the voting procedure followed for the adoption of the acts by the Council (unanimity, qualified or simple majority). The summaries can be obtained directly from the Council's website (http://ue. eu. int, under Transparency and Summary of Council acts). Furthermore, the results of votes on legislative acts are published in the press releases which are issued after Council meetings and which may also be downloaded from the Council's website (under Press Office/Newsroom and Council).

As for the Honourable Member's specific question concerning the number of votes taking place in the Council every year, statistics are available on votes taken when the Council acts in its legislative capacity. In other cases, the results of votes are only made public by Council decision taken at the request of one of its members, under Article 9(3), subparagraph (c) of its Rules of Procedure. The following statistics of abstentions and negative votes cast by delegations on the adoption of legislative acts by the Council were compiled for the period from 1996 until 2000:

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Finally, in the year 2000 the Council adopted 136 legislative acts by qualified majority and 55 by unanimity.