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More information on how the new EU Constitution will disadvantage Malta even more than it is today in the EU, is shown in the following extract from the National Platform Research and Information Centre’s critical analysis of the EU Constitution:
“Apart from the establishment of the European Union as a State in its own right, the Constitution’s most important provision in power-political terms is the shift to a primarily population-based voting system for making EU laws by the Council of Ministers. The Constitution abolishes the weighted voting system that was agreed in the Treaty of Nice to provide for EU enlargement. It lays down instead that EU laws will in future be made by a “double majority” of States and population: 55 per cent of the member States, at least 15, as long as they include 65 per cent of the EU’s population (Art. 1-25). Thus 15 States, if they satisfy the 65 per cent of the EU’s population criterion would be able to outvote 10 States.
“On the number-of-states criterion, a blocking minority must at least be 11 States, so that will be harder to assemble than before. This shift to a mainly population criterion for law-making makes it easier for the big States with their big populations to get their way. It reduces the relative voting weight of middle-rank Member States like Ireland or Sweden. It would make EU laws easier to pass, which means there would be more of them. This explains some of the opposition in countries like France and Germany to Turkey’s membership of the EU. Turkey’s population should rise to 100 million by the year 2020, at its present rate of growth, from its current 70 million. That would make it the largest country in an EU of 30 or so States. And give it the largest bloc of seats in the EU parliament, with proportionate reductions for everyone else in a Parliament of a maximum size of 750.
“The plain fact is that, leaving the question of Turkey’s membership aside, the EU has totally outgrown its institutions already. The idea of increasing membership from 15 last year, through 25 now, to 35 or 40 and running the EU as a single State, defies both logic and centrifugal force. The Dutch Prime Minister has said that Turkey’s admission would cause the EU “to implode”. The whole edifice, even without Turkey or, perhaps, the Ukraine also, whose eventual EU membership is now being mooted, following on from Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Albania et al, seems impossible to sustain.
The normal method of deciding laws under the Constitution of the new Union will be by qualified majority vote on the 25-member Council of Ministers: “The Council shall act by a qualified majority except where the Constitution provides otherwise” (Art. 1-23). The Constitution also provides that the European Council will decide by majority vote the number and system of rotation of law-making EU Councils (Art. 1-24). An eighteen-month rotation scheme of three Member States at a time has been suggested.
“The fact that voting rarely takes place on the Council of Ministers and decisions are mostly taken by “consensus” does not lessen he key importance of these voting arrangements. If Member States know they would be outvoted if a vote were to be taken on the Council of Ministers, they usually make a virtue of necessity by joining the consensus and pretending to a “Communataire” attitude. So votes are not needed or are taken rarely. However without formal voting, Member States go through a mental exercise of “shadow voting” before deciding whether to join the majority consensus or hold out against it. The ability to form coalitions to establish a blocking minority is crucial if a State is to able to prevent EU laws being imposed on it that are against its interests or that it does not want”. My comment: What the heck do we need all this for?
Eddy Privitera
Mosta
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