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Voting power in the Council of the European Union: A comprehensive sensitivity analysis

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  • D'ora Gr'eta Petr'oczy
  • L'aszl'o Csat'o

Abstract

The Council of the European Union (EU) is one of the main decision-making bodies of the EU. Many decisions require a qualified majority: the support of 55% of the member states (currently 15) that represent at least 65% of the total population. We investigate how the power distribution, based on the Shapley-Shubik index, and the proportion of winning coalitions change if these criteria are modified within reasonable bounds. The influence of the two countries with about 4% of the total population each is found to be almost flat. The level of decisiveness decreases if the population criterion is above 68% or the states criterion is at least 17. The proportion of winning coalitions can be increased from 13.2% to 20.8% (30.1%) such that the maximal relative change in the Shapley--Shubik indices remains below 3.5% (5.5%). Our results are indispensable to evaluate any proposal for reforming the qualified majority voting system.

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  • D'ora Gr'eta Petr'oczy & L'aszl'o Csat'o, 2023. "Voting power in the Council of the European Union: A comprehensive sensitivity analysis," Papers 2312.16878, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2312.16878
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