Putting Citizens First : Representation and Power in the European Union

The European Union’s 2007 Intergovernmental Conferences in Brussels and Lisbon agreed on a new composition of the European Parliament and on a new voting system for the Council of Ministers. For the legislative period 2009– 2014, the EP seats are assigned to the 27 Member States based on a proposal of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, with Italy’s total incremented by one additional seat. This allocation is herein referred to as the ‘AFCO+1’ seat allocation.1 Starting in 2014, the Council of Ministers will use a ‘double majority’ voting system, whereby an act is adopted if carried by at least 55 per cent of the member states representing 65 per cent of the EU population. An EP resolution passed in 2007 draws attention to the overall EU institutional reform package and demands that any future reform should above all address the inequalities which have arisen for historical reasons. As a contribution to this prospective debate, two citizen-based procedures are discussed here: the ‘Fix+Prop’ seat allocation mechanism for the European Parliament, and the ‘Jagiellonian Compromise’ voting system for the Council of Ministers. Incidentally, a shift to these citizen-based procedures happens to conform with a surprisingly balanced compensation of weights between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.

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