EU Blocking Minority
In the event of the UK leaving the EU, what happens to the extra seat and how does this affect the ability of smaller countries to block larger ones?
This crunch came about because of a post on Facebook. Granted, I got a bit sidetracked on an anti-Brexit rant, but it inspired another question about blocking minority powers.
EU Council Voting
Contrary to popular belief, the European Parliament is an elected body made up of 751 seats apportioned across all European countries. Germany has the maximum number of seats at 96, but they are under-represented in their population per seat because of that limit. We, France and Spain have more than we should and this naturally affects the number of seats per MEP, noting that MEP’s are chosen based on the electoral systems of the member states (so you can get more, or less than the European average per capita).
Qualified Majorities & Blocking Minorities
The reason these two exist came into force in the last round of accessions. The idea is to prevent a talking shop from getting nowhere by allowing [super]majority voting (at 55% not, 50%). This in turn, required protection for the lower population countries, to prevent them being steamrollered by bigger ones. Qualified majority voting doesn’t apply in all cases. It does not apply when treat changes are needed, nor acceptance of accession, nor in relation to a third party under any Free Trade Agreement. The details are defined in Article 218 of the TfEU.
- Qualified Majority Voting — 55% of all member states
- Blocking Minority — At least four member states comprising 35% of the EU population
For the UK, the issue, and irony, is that the European Council works with proportional representation, NOT first past the post. The very same mechanism that UKIP and the Lib Dems want to employ in the UK (because UKIP, with no MPs in parliament at the moment would actually be the third largest party)
The “problem” is that the Treaty for the European Union limits the maximum number of seats of any one nation to 96, to limit the influence of the largest countries. Given the need for unanimity in treat change, one of two things can happen when the UK leaves:
1. They could share the UK’s seats out equally, but this would limit Germany’s influence and with unanimity required, Germany could just vote against and practically veto it.
2. They simply leave the seats empty, which then introduces a secondary problem of having to reduce both the qualified majority amounts (easy, as that 55% threshold is set at national level — go from 16 out of 28 to 15 out of 27) and crucially, the “blocking minority” which has to be by a total membership representation of 35% of the EU population. Now here’s where the UK leaving hands Germany MORE power, not less. The UK leaving takes 62 million people with it. Just under a third of the representation of the highest 3. Because that’s a skew, that gifts more power to the folk at the top to pull the deviation upwards.
This means that beforehand, you needed Germany France and Poland, to block, you now need Germany France and say, Bulgaria to veto. For Leaver’s like Leave.EU supporters who thought this was a war, this hands more power to Germany, not less.
Also just crucial. The smaller countries have less of an improvement than the bigger ones (Malta get 0.01% whilst Germany gets 2.35% of an increase in voting power by us leaving). Which in turn, makes it harder for them to reach the blocking threshold to prevent any form of railroad (not that the top EU countries would necessarily, but the theoretical is there and if the right wing get in in those countries they could do just that).
Summary
So yet another assumption of the further right-wing Leavers proves false. That madness aside, this does present smaller countries with a problem and whatever happens, even if the UK decides to attempt to get them on side, the reality is the UK will not have jurisdiction to act once it’s left. So any such bargains will come to nothing.
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