Glossary of Institutions, policies and enlargement of the European Union
(Starting with "W")
©
European Communities, 1995-2007
http://europa.eu/scadplus/glossary/index_en.htm
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Weighting
of votes in the Council
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.
The European Constitution, which is
currently being ratified, will abolish the system
of weighting of votes in the Council (allocation of
one vote per Member State), replacing it with a new
definition of qualified-majority voting.
See:
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Western
European Union (WEU)
Set up in 1948 by the Treaty of Brussels,
the WEU is a European organisation for the purposes
of cooperation on defence and security. It consists
of 28 countries with four different statuses: Member
States, Associate Members, Observers and Associate
Partners. Of the EU-15 countries, ten are full Member
States, while the remaining five - Austria, Denmark,
Finland, Ireland and Sweden - have observer status.
The six Associate Members are the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland and Turkey, and there
are seven Associate Partners: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
In the Treaty of Amsterdam the WEU
was defined as an integral part of the development
of the Union because it gave the EU operational capability
in the field of defence. However, the paragraph concerned
was deleted by the Treaty of Nice. The WEU did indeed
play a major role in the first Petersberg tasks, such
as the police detachment in Mostar or cooperation
with the police in Albania. However, it now seems
to have abandoned that role in favour of developing
the Union's own structures and capabilities in the
sphere of the European security and defence policy
(ESDP). The transfer of the WEU's operational capabilities
to the Union attests to this. The WEU's subsidiary
bodies, the Security Studies Institute and the Satellite
Centre, were hived off to the Union on 1 January 2002.
The Treaty of Nice also deleted from the Treaty on
European Union a number of provisions concerning relations
between the WEU and the Union.
Collective defence, a primary responsibility
of the WEU, now falls within the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation's (NATO) sphere of competence. The European
Constitution, currently being ratified, refers to
NATO as the foundation of the collective defence of
those States which are members of it and the forum
for its implementation.
See:
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]
White
Paper
Commission White Papers are documents
containing proposals for Community action in a specific
area. In some cases they follow a Green Paper published
to launch a consultation process at European level.
When a White Paper is favourably received by the Council,
it can lead to an action programme for the Union in
the area concerned.
Examples are the White Papers on Completion
of the Internal Market (1985), on Growth, Competitiveness,
Employment (1993) and on European Governance (2001).
More recently, the White Paper on Services of General
Interest (2004) and that on a European Communication
Policy (2006) have also moulded the development of
Community policies.
See:
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