Weighting of votes in the Council

The glossary is being updated given the recent signing of the Treaty of Lisbon.

Qualified majority voting in the Council of the European Union is based on the principle of the weighting of votes. Under the current weighting system, the Member States with the largest populations have 27-29 votes, the medium-sized countries have 7-14 votes and the small countries 3 or 4 votes. A decision requires at least 255 out of 345 votes to be adopted.

The weighting arrangements are the result of a compromise between Member States that, although equal in law, differ in various respects. The number of votes allocated to a Member State is determined by the size of its population, with an adjustment that leads to relative over-representation of the countries with small populations.

In a Europe of 15, this system gave legitimacy to decisions, adopted by a qualified majority based on the broadest possible agreement.. The large countries could not combine to put the small countries in a minority, and vice versa.

With a view to enlargement, the 2000 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) initiated a revision of the weighting of votes to ensure that the relative weight of the small and medium-sized countries is not out of proportion to the size of their population. As a result, the votes allocated to the most populous countries have increased relative to the others in order for the legitimacy of the Council's decisions to be maintained in terms of demographic representativeness. The current weighting of votes, enshrined in the Treaty of Nice, came into force on 1 November 2004.

See:

• Double majority
• Ioannina compromise
• Qualified majority
• Reinforced qualified majority
• Unanimity