Decisions made by consensus in the Council of the European Union emerge from the coalition-building behaviour of individual governments.

Abstract

Despite the use of qualified majority voting, a high percentage of decisions in the Council of the European Union are still made by consensus. Frank Häge outlines a model which can potentially explain this phenomenon. He argues that the high numbers of decisions made by consensus are in fact an unintended by-product of coalition building within the Council: states band together to form blocking coalitions, with eventual decisions reflecting a compromise between these coalitions (and therefore a consensus between all states). This explains why decisions made by consensus are still extremely common, despite the EU enlargements which have taken place since the mid-1990s.

Type
Publication
European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog. London: London School of Economics and Political Science (available at http://bit.ly/11p70EL
Frank M. Häge
Frank M. Häge
Political Scientist

Senior Lecturer at the University of Limerick. Interested in Legislative Politics, European Union Politics, and Historical Political Economy.