Suchergebnisse

This paper examines how neutral the current EU decision-making procedures are to membership and how well they obey certain transparent general constitutional principles. The paper evaluates the performance of the procedures by strategic and classical power indices. The main emphasis in the assessment is in stability, efficiency and fairness. The paper concludes that co-decision either with shared right to initiate between the Commission and the Parliament or a double-hat Presidency works the best. In the Council the current weighting should be replaced by the dual majority of square-rooted populations and Member States.

This paper deals with the design of voting rules in the EU Council. Both internal and external impact of the voting rules are examined. Internal impact affects the distribution of power among the member states and external impact affects power relations between the main decision-making bodies in the EU. One of the main lessons of the analysis is that voting rules matter. This clearly explains why the design of Council voting rules has required so much bargaining and cumbersome marathon negotiations. The internal decisionmaking rules in the Council have substantial impact on both the national distribution of power in the Council and inter-institutional power between the EU's decision-making bodies.

This paper deals with the voting rules in the EU Council. Both internal and external impact of the voting rules are evaluated. Internal impact affects the distribution of power among the member states and external impact affects power relations between the main decision-making bodies in the EU. One of the main lessons of the analysis is clearly to explain why the design of Council voting rules has required so much bargaining and cumbersome marathon negotiations.

This paper examines how neutral the current EU decision-making procedures are to membership and how well they obey certain transparent general constitutional principles. The paper evaluates the performance of the procedures by strategic and classical power indices. The main emphasis in the assessment is in stability, efficiency and fairness. The paper concludes that co-decision either with shared right to initiate between the Commission and the the Parliament or a double-hat Presidency works the best. In the Council the current weighting should be replaced by the dual majority of square-rooted populations and Member States.

In the paper by Matthias Sutter a discrepancy between his results and earlier results on fair allocation of voting weights in the EU Council was found. In this paper, we explain the source of this discrepancy.

It is a constant topic of debate how the European Union (EU) spends the money it collects from its member states. This paper supports the idea that the EU budget battle involves one-shot games that have persistent impacts on the budget allocations. In one way or the other, the member states are able to establish rules or contracts that restrict the budget allocation in advance. In the current status quo, France and Spain are the clearest winners of these restrictions, while Austria, Finland and Sweden, not to mention the new member states, suffer largest losses.

The member states have self-interested objectives and they use their voting power in the Council of Ministers (CM) to maximize their shares from the EU budget, whereas European Parliament (EP) uses its power to support benevolent objectives and equality between member states. Given the current decision procedures of the EU, EP has effective power on non-compulsory expenditure covering structural spending, but not on compulsory expenditure consisting mainly of agricultural spending. We use this fact to assess how the assumed benevolent objectives of EP turn into member states' budget receipts in a power politics based model.

The member states have self-interested objectives and they use their voting power in the Council of Ministers (CM) to maximize their shares from the EU budget, whereas European Parliament (EP) uses its power to support benevolent objectives and equality between member states. Given the current decision procedures of the EU, EP has effective power on non-compulsory expenditure covering structural spending, but not on compulsory expenditure consisting mainly of agricultural spending. We use this fact to assess how the assumed benevolent objectives of EP turn into member states' budget receipts in a power politics based model.

The paper analyzes the appointment of the European Commission as a strategic game between members of the European Parliament and the Council. The focal equilibrium results in Commissioners that duplicate the policy preferences of national Council representatives. Different internal decision rules still prevent the Commission from being a Council clone in aggregate. Rather, it is predicted a priori that Commission policies are on average more in accord with the aggregate position of the Parliament than that of the Council. This prediction is confirmed for a data set covering 66 dossiers with 162 controversial EU legislative proposals passed between 1999 and 2002.