Majority voting is to Britain's advantage

Opponents of the EU sometimes argue that its provisions on majority voting mean Britain loses control because others will gang up against us to vote in a certain way, doing down our interests.

In fact, majority voting - which anyway is qualified majority voting (QMV) requiring over 70 percent of the weighted votes (weighting is by size, so Britain has more votes as a large country) to be in favour to adopt anything – rarely sees Britain out-voted, and certainly not on important matters, as Britain’s views are pretty much in the mainstream on most issues and it has enough negotiating skills to avoid being in a small minority.

The most recent figures I have show that over the three years 2004 to 2006, Britain voted against only one adopted EU measure in 2004, one in 2005 and two in 2006.

Were they of vital interest to Britain? The 2006 measures both concerned the provisional prohibition of the use and sale in Austria of genetically modified maize. The 2005 measure was a trade measure for (eastern European) countries and territories participating in or linked to the European Union's stabilisation and Association process. The 2004 measure concerned common rules on compensation and assistance to air passengers in the event of denied boarding and of cancellation or long delay of flights. In short, pretty minor, except perhaps the last one, where the quarrel was with the detail of a measure that has proved pretty popular with travellers and which many would like to see strengthened.

On the other side of the balance sheet, are the measures that Britain supported which would have been blocked by the veto of others if we had unanimity instead of QMV. With unanimity, 26 other governments have a veto over things we want, ranging from environmental measures, consumer protection, international development, trade, to CAP reform.

Seems pretty clear that QMV is in general a good deal, and should be supported – bearing in mind that it does not apply to really sensitive matters like tax, foreign policy, security, treaty revision, and so on.

It is curious to see Tony Blair lambasted in Conservative and UKIP circles for having "sold out to Europe". In much of the rest of Europe he is considered to have done precisely the opposite!

To read the Belgian or Italian press, for instance, you would have thought that Blair had single-handedly prevented the rest of Europe from carrying out the modest reforms it sought to the current EU system - or where he was unable to do so to negotiate instead an opt-out for Britain. Blair is, along with the Dutch, blamed for killing off the notion of an EU constitution. He blocked certain changes from unanimity to qualified majority voting. He has an opt-out of the Charter of Rights and kept Britain out of the euro and Schengen. He even opposed a reference in the treaty to the long standing primacy of EU law. I could go on - and many of the criticisms are unjustified. But they do illustrate how the Eurosceptic attacks on Blair in Britain are, to put it mildly, somewhat one-sided in their analysis.

Federalists are in despair. Far from being delighted with the outline for a Reform Treaty agreed by the European Council in June, as most Eurosceptics would lead you to believe, federalists have much to moan about.

The idea of a "constitution" has been abandoned. Ditto for the EU's Foreign Minister. The president of the European Council will become semi-permanent with a 30 months (instead of the current rotating six month) term of office - meaning that the president of the Intergovernmental European Council, chosen by the Prime Ministers of the member states, will become more prominent at the expense of the President of the Commission elected by the European Parliament. There is to be no qualified majority voting on tax, on foreign policy or on security. Foreign policy is to remain firmly intergovernmental. The Commission's "embassies" around the world are now to come under the joint responsibility of the Council and the Commission, allowing member states to have greater control over them and to place their own staff in them. The Charter of Rights has been partially neutered. There are more opt-outs for member states, not least the UK.

Either Britain's Eurosceptics are far too blinkered to notice this, or else they are deliberately ignoring it because they want to frighten people into believing that any changes to the current EU treaties mean a step towards a more federal system, which they anyway characterise as a centralised superstate. Don't expect any of them to dwell on any of the above subjects.

The Finnish Prime Minister today reported back to the European Parliament on Friday's European Council summit. This European Council was neither historic nor punctuated by spectacular disagreements. Yes, even Summit meetings can be boring!

The Finnish Prime Minister, Vanhanen (not to be confused with Dan Hannan, Tory Eurosceptic!) mentioned his regrets that the European Council did not agree to switch from unanimity to qualified majority voting (QMV) on the issue of co-operation on fighting crime - a proposal which was blocked, among others, by Germany and Britain. He said if you want effective decision-taking in the EU, then it was necessary to have QMV. To have 27 vetoes round the table and still expect to emerge with a sensible policy is obviously difficult. Indeed, a good example had just been given a few days before, when Poland alone vetoed a decision which Britain was rather keen on, namely establishing a system whereby prisoners can be transferred to their own countries to serve their sentences. As Britain has a relatively large number of foreign prisoners, it is in our interest to get them out of our overcrowded jails and let them serve their sentences at home (and at their home countries expense). Yet because of the veto system, Poland was able to block something that every other country agreed to.

Vanhanen was interesting in another sense - the evolution of Finland's position. Historically, Finland was a deeply Eurosceptic country, keeping out of the European Union and even the Council of Europe for many years. When it eventually joined in the mid 1990s it was initially cautious. Yet now, it is an enthusiastic participant in the European Union, has joined the euro (within which its economic performance is even better than Britain's), has joined the Schengen area of passport free travel within Europe and supports more majority voting in the Council of Ministers. Last week it also ratified the European Constitution.

Perhaps we should send some of Britain's Eurosceptics to Finland?

The government is about to take a position on the issue of switching to QMV (qualified majority voting, where the EU Council of Ministers can take decisions by over 71% of the votes) instead of unanimity (100% of the votes) for some types of EU decisions in the field of judicial co-operation. This would be a possibility if the so-called "Passarelle" (bridge) clause of the current treaties were used to transfer matters from the EU’s “Third pillar” to the “Community Pillar”. Under the latter, governments have the option of changing from a procedure requiring unanimity in the Council of Ministers and no parliamentary approval to one allowing QMV with parliamentary approval. It should also be pointed out that Britain anyway has the right to opt-in or stay out of measures adopted in this field of policy.

The House of Lords EU Committee has pointed out that there is a problem in resisting change to QMV in fields where, under the protocol for Britain and Ireland, we anyway have the right to opt-in or out of the decisions taken. The Lords report on this matter said that as “the UK would not have to participate in proposals brought forward, the Government will need to consider carefully whether the UK should stand in the way of other member states deciding to transfer criminal law competence to the Community”.

The Lords also point to the advantages of QMV in terms of decision taking. They point to the paralysis suffered by the requirement for unanimity among 25-27 national governments highlighting the time taken to agree the European evidence warrant and the failure to make progress on the framework decision on procedural rights in criminal proceedings for people charged in other member states. The Lords report says – “we believe that the proposal deserves careful examination and caution against any knee-jerk reactions resulting from media coverage”.

The Law Society also considers that “the full incorporation of the Justice and Home Affairs pillar into the Community structure offers the best guarantees that the rights and freedoms that are in the interests of individuals will be balanced against the security concerns of the member states”.

It is therefore all the more shocking to read the language used by the Commons scrutiny committee. Granted, this committee has always attracted rabid Eurosceptics like Tory MPs Bill Cash and David Heathcoat-Amory, but it has generally had a pro-Europe majority. Yet, it is now arguing against the proposal , describing the “passarelle” as a “gangplank” and questioning “whether it would be acceptable for the European Parliament to have the right of co-decision on measures (…) when most of its Members do not represent and are not answerable to the electorate of the UK”?

This is a remarkable argument. By analogy, from a Welsh (or a Scottish) perspective, is it acceptable for the Westminster Parliament to take decisions when most of its Members do not represent and are not answerable to the electorate of Wales (or Scotland)?

Whatever level a decision is to be taken, the Parliament of that level should be involved. If a matter is to be decided at EU level (which we should decide on objective usefulness or otherwise of having common decisions in these areas), then the European Parliament will be involved - and of course it contains non-Brits!

Michael Connarty MP, the (Scottish) Labour chair of the Committee, may find he is inadvertently giving succour to SNP diatribes against Westminster!

I see that the proposed Services Directive, a reform adopted by the European Parliament and recently approved also by the ministers in the EU Council, is estimated to be worth over £5 billion a year to the British economy, according to Britain's Department of Trade and Industry.

Yet the adoption of this directive is only possible because there is qualified majority voting (QMV) rather than unanimity in the Council of Ministers. If there had been unanimity, the proposal would have been whittled away by various governments (France springs to mind) insisting upon deletions and derogations until nothing was left.

Those who oppose the abolition of the veto should remember that the veto is a double-edged sword - if we have one then so does everybody else and there are 24 other countries who can block things we want in the Council. In practice, Britain is rarely out voted at all and the QMV enables us to actually get European decisions that are beneficial.

The figures also put into perspective the budget deal made earlier this year. Whereas there was an outcry at Britain's net contribution to the EU possibly increasing by about €5 billion euros over the next several years, this single measure alone will bring in €5 billion every year. Indeed, the effects of the single market overall are of a far greater magnitude than the figures in the EU budget, which in total represents only one per cent of GDP.