Which Decision rule for the future Council?

Abstract:

Decisions in the Council of Ministers continue to be surrounded by secrecy as far as the details of the decision-making process are concerned. Most of the research on reform efforts has focused on increasing transparency and on facilitating the management of various auxiliary bodies of the Council. In addition, a central focus has been placed on re-weighting of votes among the Member States. In this article we argue that the current method of finding agreement and avoiding votes in the Council ('culture of consensus') will be impracticable with enlarged membership. Hence, formalised voting procedures will be needed. We discuss some desiderata of such procedures.