INSTITUTIONS, PUBLIC POLICY AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC REALITIES, pages: 261 - 273, 2021

EU Council Decision-Making: a Discussion on the Late Weighted Votes Criterion

Doi: https://doi.org/10.58603/RLFJ2197

Abstract: In the wider extended academic concern regarding the decision-making system that the EU is and should be using, a voting frame rediscussed in the Brexit context and whose modification proposals are usually widely debated, this paper focuses on a peculiar aspect of the intra-institutional decision-making process, i.e. on what was known as the weighted votes component of the qualified majority voting used in the EU Council. What was the logic of establishing this system, how did it develop and why the member states decided to abandon it? These are the main questions to whom the article will answer, with the aim to indicate that the current modified Lisbon system, despite its alleged improvements in terms of legitimacy, transparency and adaptability to enlargement waves, offered a new QMV definition that is still locked in the blocking minorities safety nets of the EU power politics game.