Double majority
The term double majority refers to a voting procedure in which a majority of votes according to two different criteria are required to pass a resolution . This form of a qualified majority is used in Switzerland and has been in force for majority decisions in the Council of the European Union since 2014 .
It is characteristic in both cases that a majority of the electorate or, in the case of the EU, a majority of the represented population as well as a majority of the member states of the community are necessary for a resolution .
Switzerland
A constitutional amendment on the federal level in Switzerland can only come into force when it in a referendum, both the majority of voters ( popular majority ) than the majority of well cantons of the Swiss Confederation (so-called cantons agree).
Federated States votes
For the number of cantons , 20 full cantons are counted with one vote each , the six half cantons with half a vote each. The number of estates is therefore twelve votes. In the 19th century, the cantons (= estates) were able to determine how their respective voices were determined. Today, the simple majority of the citizens voting in the canton determines how a canton's professional vote is evaluated. Since the two smallest cantons with a full vote only have fewer than 40,000 inhabitants, while the two largest have more than 900,000 inhabitants, the greater influence of a citizen of the smaller cantons is partly problematized from the point of view of equal voting.
European Union
Majority decisions
The Council of the European Union (also known as the Council of Ministers) generally decides with a simple majority of its members, with each state having one vote. Malta, Poland and Germany are legally the same despite their different size, population and economic strength. The principle of simple majority is deviated from if something else is expressly provided in primary law ( EU treaty or AEU treaty ). There are two options: qualified majority and unanimity .
Qualified majority
According to the Lisbon Treaty , a qualified majority in the Council of the European Union requires, on the one hand, that at least 55% of the member states approve a proposed resolution, with each country having one vote. Furthermore, the agreeing member states must represent at least 65% of the EU population ( Art. 238 TFEU ). The population and thus the seats in the EU Parliament have shifted after a BREXIT
This regulation came into force in 2014. Until then, the earlier regulation under the Treaty of Nice still applied , according to which the votes of the member states were " weighted " in qualified majority voting . The individual states had between 3 and 29 votes; the total number of votes since the expansion to 27 member states in 2007 was 345. Three conditions were necessary for a qualified majority decision: a simple majority of the member states, 73.9% of the total of 345 votes and 62% of the EU population.
The voting procedure with weighted votes goes back to the early days of the European Communities . The number of votes that a country owns is roughly based on the size of its population, but has come about in detail through negotiations and therefore appears more or less arbitrary. Particularly after the failure of the EU summit in Nice could only be prevented by a vote distribution, which was difficult to justify, a new voting procedure was sought at the EU constitutional convention that should be easier to communicate to the population. For this, the principle of the double majority was chosen, in which the population of a country was weighted more heavily. The less populous EU states and in particular Spain and Poland , which were favored in the Treaty of Nice with 27 votes each compared to their actual population, initially rejected the new model, which prevented the adoption of the EU constitutional treaty at the European Council in December 2003 . During the Intergovernmental Conference that followed, the initially negative governments were convinced of the double majority voting mode, especially after the Spanish parliamentary elections in 2004 led to a change of government in this country.
After the failure of the constitutional treaty, the newly elected Polish government in 2007 returned to the demand for a different voting procedure and now demanded the introduction of voting weighting according to the square root law of Lionel Penrose , which scientists had proposed as an alternative in 2003. The respective power index of the member states determined with this vote-weighting procedure should (with the secondary condition of a quorum of 62% of the votes) take greater account of the influencing factor of the respective domestic population, which only has an indirect effect via the respective government respective government in a decision-making body of the EU has the same arithmetic voting strength (influence strength). Ultimately, however, the Polish government gave in again, so that the double majority procedure was introduced in the Lisbon Treaty.
Web links
- Explanation of the double majority (official website of the European Union)
- Scientists group drafts new voting procedure , notification from Ruhr-Universität-Bochum, May 10, 2004
Individual evidence
- ↑ Factsheet EUROPE elections 2019
- ↑ Treaty of Nice - Instructions for use: The Council of the European Union ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. SCADPlus, accessed June 7, 2008
- ↑ Marius Heuser: Poland signals giving in to the EU constitution , March 26, 2004
