Ins and outs
Over the past three years, the UK voted against the majority most frequently, in 29% of all votes that were not unanimous. Next were Germany and Austria (16%), Denmark (13%) and the Netherlands (11%). France and Lithuania always voted with the majority.
The UK and Germany, in addition to topping the list of votes against the majority, were also (together with Austria) the member states that voted against each other most frequently. The countries with the fewest ‘No' votes and statements were Lithuania, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Luxembourg, Romania and Slovakia.
Two issues stood out as the most contentious: agriculture, and environment and public health. In agriculture, the UK disagreed with the majority most often, while in environment and public health that role was taken by Denmark. However, dissenting votes are rare even in the most contentious areas: out of 36 votes on matters relating to the environment and public health, Denmark voted ‘No' just three times and abstained four times. In the 25 votes on agriculture, the UK voted ‘No' once and abstained four times.
The gaps
The Council's voting procedures and communication policy mean that the data VoteWatch compiles and analyses are incomplete. The Council releases data only on final votes by ministers on adopted legislative proposals. Rejections are not recorded as votes, and votes in preparatory bodies – such as the Committee of Permanent Representatives, or the various Council working groups – are not made public. Such bodies also frequently hold ‘shadow' votes to gauge support for changes to legislative proposals, which are also not made public.
But perhaps the biggest gap in knowledge concerns decisions taken through comitology, a procedure that allows the European Commission to adopt implementing acts in Commission-chaired committees of member states' representatives. The procedure was adapted after the Lisbon treaty took effect in December 2009, with new rules coming into force in March 2011. The system is still “the biggest hole in the transparency and legitimacy of the [EU's] decision-making process”, according to Ignasi Guardans (pictured), a VoteWatch board member and a Spanish Liberal MEP in 2004-09.
Opening up
Despite the many gaps in the member states' voting records, the Council is becoming more transparent, which is one of the reasons why VoteWatch has decided to monitor voting by member states as well as by MEPs.
Sara Hagemann, one of the authors of the report on Council voting, says that the report relies exclusively on publicly-available data. “There is a lot of information available from the Council. Compared with national systems, it is quite open,” she says. Before the Lisbon treaty, a lot depended on the holder of the Council's rotating presidency, she adds. “Now things are a bit more centralised by the secretariat-general of the Council and a bit more consistent.”
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