Less is more in foreign policy: unanimity hanging by a thread?

At the beginning of May, a so-called Group of Friends, led by Germany and also including Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain issued an appeal to overhaul voting on the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Romania joined the group this week.

Instead of unanimity on key foreign and security policy questions, the group called for a system called qualified majority voting. Such voting requires 15 of the 27 countries being in agreement – as long as they represent more than 65 percent of the EU’s total population of roughly 450 million.

“The goal is to improve effectiveness and speed of our foreign-policy decision-making. Against the backdrop of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the growing international challenges the EU is facing, the members of the Group are convinced that EU foreign policy needs adapted processes and procedures in order to strengthen the EU as a foreign policy actor,” the Group of Friends stated in a document.

In opposition, however, a coalition of countries has formed in favour of maintaining unanimity. According to reports, it includes, among others, Poland and Hungary.

Changing geopolitical situation calls for more speed

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stressed that the group was not proposing a revolution, but an assessment of what could be done within the existing EU treaties to make the Union’s foreign and security policy more effective. The existing treaties, under the so-called “passerelle clauses”, allow for a shift from unanimity to qualified majority decision-making in certain areas, including sanctions.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz considers changes to the voting procedures of the European Union inevitable. It should not be possible for one individual member state to stop everything, Scholz told German media.

In a speech in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Scholz also spoke about reform needs within the European Union, including changes necessary to admit more countries to the now 27-strong union. More decisions would have to be taken by majority rather than unanimity vote, he stated. Meanwhile, insisting on democratic principles and the rule of law was “indispensable,” he added.

The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez spoke along the same lines during the institutional celebration of Europe Day on 9 May.  “We have to opt decisively for qualified majority voting and, therefore, we have to be consistent. If we are moving towards an EU of more than 30 countries, we will have to change the way we decide the policies we implement,” Sánchez said.

On board, but treading carefully

For now, Slovenia is part of the Group of Friends “to keep an eye on what is going on,” Slovenian Foreign Ministry State Secretary Samuel Žbogar said on Monday. “As a small country, we want to state what our problems might be and make it clear that we need certain assurances that our interests will be taken into consideration,” he added.

”A more efficient decision-making process, through the use of qualified majority voting, would give the EU the ability to act quickly and have an impact,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. He too brought to mind that, at the same time, it remained important for Romania to ensure the necessary mechanisms to protect and safeguard national interests.

Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Antonio Tajani personally is “in favour of qualified majority voting (in foreign policy, ed.), but this is not the time to deal with this issue,” he said. “If anything,” he added, the issue could be taken up again “after the end of the Ukrainian crisis and after we have concluded the enlargement to the Balkans.”

When it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Secretary General of the European Movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haris Plakalo, believes that changing the voting rules will not affect this country as much, because Bosnia and Herzegovina received the status of a candidate country for EU membership in December of last year, although it did not fulfil the set priorities. “We do not need to be worried, nor can we, when it comes to changing the approach to decision-making on foreign policy in the EU Council, because the expansion of the EU to the Western Balkans is defined and determined by many documents, strategies and outlined as one of the important tasks of the EU,” he added.

Preserving the veto

The Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Zbigniew Rau told Polish media that “there is a strong tendency on the part of the German neighbours (…) that those matters which, according to the current state of the law, are subject to unanimous voting, such as tax issues and, most importantly for us, those concerning security and foreign policy, should be decided by a majority vote. We, as Poland, cannot agree to that,” he said.

Bulgaria is so far upholding the unanimity rule, acting Foreign Minister Ivan Kondov noted. He stated that in his opinion this should not be changed, but added that the next government in Sofia should take it from there.  Bulgaria is expected to have a new rotating government soon, co-chaired by former European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel.

Sofia has used its veto once since joining the EU in 2007, in relation to the start of enlargement negotiations with North Macedonia last year. Sofia and Skopje have differences, with Bulgaria and the EU insisting that, in order to open the first negotiating chapters, North Macedonia’s constitution be amended to include the local Bulgarian minority as one of the minorities in the former Yugoslav republic.

Nemanja Todorović Štiplija of European Western Balkans, an independent think tank based in Belgrade that focuses on the Western Balkan countries, said that the debate about unanimity “has been going on for years, but there is no sign that it will be resolved in the near future. It is true that it is related to the topic of enlargement (…), but its greater importance is for the situations we are currently witnessing – Hungary’s opposition to certain decisions in the domain of the Common Foreign and Security Policy.”

Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó expressed “concern about the debate on qualified majority voting in EU foreign policy, noting the importance of maintaining the unanimity requirement to protect national interests.” At a press conference, Szijjártó reported that there was a meeting at ambassador level for those member states who wanted to keep the possibility to defend their own interest in the decision-making process in Brussels.

When asked if Croatia participated in this meeting, Croatian Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Gordan Grlić Radman said that he was not aware of this initiative.

Grlić Radman said that Croatia did not support the proposal to replace decision-making by consensus with a qualified majority voting in some areas of the EU’s foreign policy, as unanimity was the only mechanism that guaranteed the equality of smaller states. However, he emphasised, “that does not mean that Croatia is not in favour of EU unity. On the contrary, until now we have never blocked any decision and we have always been a constructive collaborator.”

Strength in diversity?

Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he was against centralism and for diversity in the EU, and thus against more EU majority decisions. The struggle for consensus was difficult in the EU, he said, but this ensured democracy and diversity.

The Austrian Foreign Ministry also expressed scepticism about the proposal, saying that qualified majority voting was not a panacea. “Only political will is the key to success, the struggle for compromise is the essence of the EU. And once agreements are reached, they are supported by all. That is a special value, especially in volatile times like now.”

In the past, however, top Austrian politicians had spoken out in favour of majority decisions.

The Group of Friends said it aimed to coordinate with EU institutions and work closely with all member states, inviting other countries to join its reform drive. Should a simple majority of EU countries – 14 out of 27 member states – vote to launch a process to reform the EU treaties, negotiations could begin.

This article is published Fridays. The content is based on news by agencies participating in the enr.