Inequality among EU citizens in the EU's Council decision procedure (original) (raw)

Abstract

This paper provides a normative assessment of the inequality among EU citizens imputable to the decision-making rule used by the European Council of Ministers. To this end, the EU decisionmaking process is modeled by a compound two-stage game among the EU citizens, whose respective voting power is evaluated by their Banzhaf index in the years 1958 -1999. Two inequality indices measure the resulting inequality in the distribution of power among citizens. This permits us to evaluate the actual qualified majority rule and to compare this rule with an alternative rule, the socalled double majority rule. D Union of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, whose ratio of populations is 37:24:1. With a distribution of votes proportional to the population figures, the Dutch representative would be able to act as a dictator if a simple majority of votes were required, while all representatives would be necessary to make a decision if 62 votes were required. From the citizens' point of view, in the first case, the citizens from Belgium and Luxembourg would be only formally represented, while in the second case, the Dutch and Belgian citizens would be underrepresented compared to the Luxembourgers. As shown by this simple example, the objective of democracy is not generally satisfied by distributing votes in proportion to population. The degree of democracy is better reflected by citizens' respective possibilities of influencing the outcome of a vote. The distribution of votes in the Council of Ministers can be considered as fulfilling the objective of democracy if, a priori, it establishes equal possibilities of influencing the outcome of a vote for all citizens, regardless of their nationality.

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