The EU Council or Council of Ministers is the European Union’s most important decision-maker and legislator alongside the European Parliament. It is made up of the ministers of the Member State governments. The Council enacts regulations and directives together with the European Parliament on the basis of European Commission proposals. The Council also adopts specific decisions.
The Council meets in different configurations depending on the subject area involved. The key Council is the General Affairs and External Relations (GAERC) Council, which under the Lisbon Treaty has been split into two councils, the General Affairs Council (GAC) and the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC). With greater economic convergence, the single currency and the economic crisis, the Economic and Financial Affairs (ECOFIN) Council has grown in importance. The individual Council meetings are chaired by the minister of the country that holds the presidency. An exception to this practice is the FAC, which is chaired by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton.
The official meetings of the Council of Ministers are held in Brussels except in April, June and October, when the ministers meet in Luxembourg. Usually there are no meetings in August, but during the Finnish presidency in August 2006, for example, two extraordinary meetings of the GAERC were held. The foreign ministers met in Brussels on account of the war in Lebanon.
The Council of Ministers takes decisions unanimously, by qualified majority or by simple majority. Under the Lisbon Treaty, considerably more decisions are taken by Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) than was the case before. This brings clarity and efficiency to the decision-making process. Unanimity amongst the Member States is still required in areas such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), tax policy and defence issues. Unanimity means that all the Member States have to accept the solution that has been proposed, while a single Member State can stop the solution being adopted.
When a decision is taken by QMV, each Member State’s vote is weighted according to its population. Since November 2004 the Nice Treaty has applied, and this grants 29 votes to the largest Member States, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom; 27 votes to Spain and Poland, etc. Finland has 7 votes.
255 votes out of 345 are required to achieve a qualified majority. Furthermore, there has to be a majority of the Member States behind any decision. A blocking minority against a decision requires 91 votes. This requires, for example, three large Member States and one small one to oppose the decision.
The Lisbon Treaty brings with it a new double majority system, under which achieving a qualified majority in the Council (and European Council) will require at least 55 per cent of Member States and at least 65 per cent of the combined population of the EU. However, at least four Member States will still be required to block decisions. Furthermore, the 55 per cent must comprise at least fifteen Member States. The double majority system is expected to be introduced on 1 November 2014.
