Madam, - Tony Brown is right to say (February 27th) that most decisions of the EU Council of Ministers are taken by consensus, without a vote. But that does not mean that the voting weight of each member-state, and the ability to veto certain decisions, is not crucially important.
A form of "shadow voting" takes place all the time on the EU Council. The Ministers around the table mentally calculate whether, when all the potential votes for and against are counted, there is a qualified majority in favour of an EU law or decision, or whether a "blocking minority" exists. They then decide whether it is in their interest to push things to a formal vote or not.
Small member-states are especially reluctant to make a nuisance of themselves by doing this. Hence the predominant appearance of consensus.
This is why, in power-political terms, probably the most important proposal in the Treaty of Lisbon is to replace the system of weighted votes that has existed since the Treaty of Rome by a system based primarily on population size for making future EU laws. This "double majority" system means that under Lisbon 15 of the 27 states would be able to make an EU law as long as their combined populations amounted to 65 per cent of the Union's total population of some 500 million people.
This means a big shift in voting influence towards the member-states with big populations and a diminution in that of smaller states such as Ireland. Under the Lisbon proposals, Germany's voting weight in making EU laws would double from its present 8 per cent to 17 per cent, France's would increase from 8 per cent to 13 per cent, and Britain's and Italy's would go from 8 per cent to 12 per cent each, while Ireland's would fall from 2 per cent to 0.8 per cent.
When Ireland joined the then EEC in 1973 we had three votes on the Council of Ministers, against 10 each for the big states, a ratio of around a third. Under the current Nice Treaty arrangements we have seven votes, against 29 each for the big states, a ratio of a quarter. Under Lisbon we would have 4 million people to Germany's 82 million and France, Britain and Italy's average of 60 million each, a ratio of one-twentieth and one-fifteenth respectively.
Couple this with the absence of an Irish member on the EU Commission, the body which proposes all EU laws, for five years out of every 15, and the replacement of our right to decide who the Irish Commissioner is by a right to make "suggestions" only for the new Commission President to decide, and it should be evident that the proposals for supranational law-making and decision-taking in the post-Lisbon EU amount to a power-grab by the big states and are not in our interests.
As for the veto, if the Irish people agree to ratify Lisbon they would be giving up the right they have at present to veto EU measures to harmonise company taxes and to introduce new EU taxes to provide the Union with its "own resources". As regards the former, Lisbon would hand over the power to introduce majority voting on company taxes to the EU prime ministers and presidents as long as they agree that step unanimously among themselves.
After Lisbon we would be depending entirely on the backbone of the current Taoiseach or his successor to resist pressures to alter Ireland's low company tax position, which has been so important for bringing foreign investment here over the years.
Former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing called this "escalator" or "ratchet" clause "a central innovation" of the EU Constitution he helped to draft, and it is surely naive to think that it would not be used. - Yours, etc,
ANTHONY COUGHLAN,
Secretary,
The National Platform (EU Research and Information Centre),
Crawford Avenue,
Dublin 9.