Publication

The article seeks to explain why the decision-making process in the Council of Ministers (CM) of the EU is such a contentious issue. The authors hold the ill-understanding of this basically mathematical problem responsible for the debate around the CM's voting process. They argue that as long as this shortcoming will persist, the voting procedures are likely to always end up in a deadlock just as it has been the case for the voting on the draft Constitution for Europe at the Summit Conference in Brussels that broke down without any agreement. The problem roots in the difficulty of measuring voting power in a system in which the entities have distinct numbers of votes. They conclude their observation by proposing a new weighing system that, according to them, would provoke less resistance from EU politicians.