realclearworld Newsletters: Europe Memo
The term "qualified majority voting" is one of those cotton-mouthed bits of eurospeak that until recently remained relatively opaque. In practice it is simple: In certain cases, the European Council can approve Commission proposals with favorable votes from 55 percent of member states, when these represent at least 65 percent of the total EU population.
At the very worst, the acronym QMV represented a mild technocratic irritant to sovereign will, implying as it does the right of European institutions to force the will of a handful of participating states at the behest of the majority in the European Council. As such, the goal is to not use QMV. When it is called into play, the appropriate policy arenas are usually fisheries, agriculture, anything that regards sewing up the internal market -- nothing so intrinsic to sovereignty as the control of borders.
Put in the context of immigration, QMV invites the rhetoric of political apocalypse. It has been referred to as a "nuclear option," and when the Council this week used QMV to approve the redistribution across the European Union of tens of thousands of refugees, EU Observer wrote that it was "forcing" the scheme on the Union's eastern states.
An interviewee cited by a Delors Institute study (which is well worth a read in its entirety) referred to QMV as a deterrent meant to encourage consensus:
"If an observer were to attend Council meetings he or she would notice next to no evidence of qualified-majority voting. It is very unusual for presidencies to ask delegations to vote. The official explanation is that presidencies will seek consensus around the table and will thus avoid isolating colleagues. This expression of noblesse oblige is, of course, very welcome but is only part of the explanation. Qualified-majority voting is like the sword of Damocles hanging above the negotiation table. It is in the mind of everyone. The Presidency, Commission, and delegations assess the state of negotiation -- almost permanently and automatically -- in terms of whether there is a qualified majority or a blocking minority. [...] A lack of official voting [...] does not mean at all that the qualified-majority system is absent, nor does it mean that finding consensus is the general rule."
Ultimately, no one wants to be left out of a decision that is going to pass regardless. It creates domestic political difficulties by casting the national government as a bad bargainer. Conversely, a state's willingness to nevertheless resist helps inform the European Commission on states' own red lines, so that it knows when to back down.
So, what happens when the sword falls? Europe desperately wanted to avoid this outcome, but despite Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker making refugee resettlement a core proposal of his State of the European Union speech, and despite emergency summits charged with building consensus behind the idea, we have arrived at a unique moment where Europe has decided it has little choice but to overtly and most visibly challenge the sovereignty of a handful of its members. Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and the Czech Republic opposed the measure -- Poland, a country often comfortable with taking a contrarian position, voted in the majority -- and this adds another twist of irony to the unfolding tale. The European Union's eastern enlargement -- locked in with so many self-congratulations -- has visibly undermined its consensus-building machine.
Around the Continent
Clash of regions, clash of centuries? France's Le Monde bemoans the effects of that enlargement, wondering in an editorial at the presence within the Union of Viktor Orban, Hungary's prime minister and by many indications a budding autocrat:
"A quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is a strange echo from the Eastern front, more than just the small ultranationalist score emanating from the proposals of Viktor Orban. The once-liberal advocate who bravely helped bring down the iron curtain in 1989 now takes it upon himself to extol the worthiness of authoritarian governance, that of Moscow or Beijing. He wants to extend the fence that closes the frontier with Serbia to other countries in the European Union.
"None of his outrages draw the reproach of the European Popular Party, of which Fidesz, Orban's party, is a member in the European Parliament. For these countries on that Eastern front, the European Union is reduced to two elements: structural funds and a great market. There is no regard for the shared humanist and democratic values that are the pillar of European integration.
...
"The Orban doctrine, the doctrine of the Eastern Front, is the scission of the European project from that which makes it most noble. It's a disquieting reality in this first chapter of the 21st Century."
Ionian echoes: And speaking of scissions, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is going on offense in his effort to pull recalcitrant members of his center-left ruling party behind constitutional reforms set to be voted upon in the coming weeks. A faction of the Democratic Party (PD) remains opposed to reforms to the Senate, Italy's upper chamber. Among other changes such as a cut in the Senate's size, the reform would eliminate the direct election of senators. Opponents have called it dictatorial, but Renzi insists that the matter is non-negotiable.
Renzi caused something of a cross-Ionian political tempest this week by calling on his intra-party opponents to heed the results of Greek elections.
"Those who wound with a scission, perish in elections," Renzi said. (It sounds far more poetic in Italian: Chi di scissioni ferisce, di elezioni perisce.) For good measure, the prime minister added: "We finally got Varoufakis out of the way in the process."
Varoufakis is not one to let others get the last word. Quoted today in Il Fatto Quotidiano:
"Mr. Renzi, I have a message for you: You can rejoice as much as you like over the fact that I am no longer the finance minister. But you have not gotten rid of me. What you have gotten rid of, participating in that vile coup against Alexis Tsipras, is Greek democracy.
Polls suggest Renzi's approval rating is falling fast.
Slamming the brakes: Volkswagen AG chief executive Martin Winterkorn has resigned.
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