Veto Players and Decision‐making in the EU After Nice

George Tsebelis and Xenophon Yataganas

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2002, vol. 40, issue 2, 283-307

Abstract: The Treaty of Nice introduced a triple majority requirement for Council decisions. In order to be valid, Council decisions require not only a qualified majority (slightly larger than before), but also an absolute majority of Member States and, at a country’s request, a 62 per cent majority of the total population of EU countries. We explain why this significant modification of the rules occurred and what the likely consequences are. The triple majority requirement was introduced because the approaching enlargement of the EU differentiates for the first time between the three majoritarian criteria (weighted votes in the Council, majority of countries, and majority of the population). Different countries have insisted on each of these criteria and the final outcome is an explicit incorporation of all three. The likely outcomes of this change in rules are increased difficulty of legislative decisions, a shift of veto powers in favour of the Council, an increased role for the judiciary, and a further bureaucratization of the EU.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5965.00355

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:40:y:2002:i:2:p:283-307

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott

More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().