Council of Ministers

The Council does not have one single presidency, however the role is rotated every six months currently the Presidency lies with Portugal.  The Minister from this state then sets the agenda.  The council votes on issues in three ways, unanimity, simple majority or qualified majority.  In most cases qualified majority is used, this means there must e a minimum of 255 votes out of 345, and a majority of member states.  The number of ministers elected to represent the state on the Council depends upon the size of the state population.  

Under the third pillar (police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters), there is little supranational influence.  As a result of this The Council is very powerful, as Parliament has no say and the commission has no right to initiate legislation in this field. Under the second and third pillars the council has the right to legislate initiative on rights within these pillars, meaning that these two pillars operate in a more intergovernmental fashion.  In the third pillar there is an aim to achieve free movement across internal borders and co-operation between national courts and police forces.

There is another aspect to the Council of Ministers: he committee of permanent representatives (COREPER). It is a body composed of representatives from the states who meet each week to prepare the work and tasks of the council. This body appears in article 207 (1) EC. It mirrors the ministers and is done by high ranking civil servants.  

The council is made up of so many different state members that both intergovernmental and supranational aspects are present within the institution. Without these two aspects the Council Of Ministers would find it hard to operate together due to the vast number of opinions and needs within the council members. However, it is mostly claimed to be a supranational body, for decisions are binding on member states and override national law, despite the fact that national interests are represented by the Ministers.

Furthermore, with the onset of the Reform Treaty 2007 agreed at the Brussels summit, the Council of Ministers is also to be subject to several reforms. Some of them were adopted from the earlier agreed Constitutional Treaty of 2004, which was never ratified. One of these decisions was to establish a new voting system in the, with a qualified majority requiring the support of a “double majority” of at least 55 per cent of countries who must also represent at least 65 per cent of the EU’s population. This was changed by the Reform Treaty to retain the reform, to be phased in from 2014, due to Polish objections. Secondly, a less radical reform proposed is that more decisions in the Council of Ministers would be by Qualified Majority Voting. Exceptions include subjects that are sensitive for national sovereignty, such as tax, social security, foreign policy and defence. These will continue to require unanimity. These two reforms serve the objective of making the enlarged EU more efficient.

Another objective of the Treaty is to increase accountability and Parliamentary scrutiny, which affected the Council of Ministers because National parliaments will be given more time to review legislative proposals before Council meeting. It went up to 8 weeks, from the usual 6. Secondly, when acting on legislation, the Council of Ministers would meet in public, making accountability easier. The remaining reforms affected the EU as a whole, but not specifically targeted the Council of Ministers.

However, like any other such institution the Council of Ministers is prone to criticism. Reforms attempt to tackle these problems, but it should be stressed that a concept of ‘democratic deficit’ has been a criticism of the EU as a whole, including certain aspects of the Council itself. The democratic deficit is an issue which has been deliberated over for many years. A democratic deficit is considered to be occurring when ostensibly  organizations or institutions (particularly ) are seen to be falling short of fulfilling the principles of the parliamentary democracy in their practices or operation. Europe’s ‘democratic deficit', whether it be perceived or real, is largely due to the EU’s institutional architecture, which promotes a type of circulatory decision-making process, but permits little input from the European public sphere. In this light the Council was criticized in a number of occasions, one theoretical criticism being that “the almost clandestine nature of its procedures, often coupled with a lack of sufficient member state input, introduces a distinct perception of democratic deficit into the workings of the Council.” Furthermore, with the introduction of qualified majority voting, member state representatives in the Council are further empowered to manipulate voting procedures, sometimes according to compressed timeframes, to reach a decision, inevitably leading at times to a blocking or veto of minority opinions within the Council. To point out once again a reform stated earlier, one of holding public meeting, it is interesting to see that it, too, roots from a prior criticism on the openness of the Council’s decision making process. Even though some may argue in the interests of secrecy, there are clear advantages outlined to such a reform: As mentioned above, public legislative meetings must obviously exist as a principle, but there are many other important positive effects. Ministers’ actions and positions will become clearer, and that would render them more accountable to national parliaments and citizens. Ministers have to explain why they have not defended a particular option or why they abandoned their national instructions and cannot just hide behind others. They become more responsible for the decisions taken. The idea of executive domination within the EU also springs from this criticism, but with the forthcoming reforms this is likely to change.

Therefore, the Council of Ministers is a very prominent institution within the EU, especially in terms of legislation. Despite the supranational nature, it is a ministerial Council and not independent of national interests, it is not the most democratic institution within the EU. However, with the emergence of the Reform Treaty and from a need of change resulting from the membership enlargement, the Council will be subject to improvement or simply modification in the way it is run.

Words: 1357