March 29. 2024. 2:46

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Nine EU members states renew push to change foreign policy decision-making


A group of nine EU member states on Thursday (4 May) launched a fresh push, led by Germany, to reform the bloc’s approach to decision-making on foreign policy and defence, after years of infighting over the issue.

The so-called Group of Friends including Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain issued an appeal to overhaul voting on the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)

They aim to “improve effectiveness and speed of our foreign-policy decision-making” in light of “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the growing international challenges the EU is facing”.

“EU foreign policy needs adapted processes and procedures in order to strengthen the EU as a foreign policy actor” and “improved decision-making is also key to making the EU fit for the future,” they said in a joint statement.

Rather than unanimity, the group calls for the use of qualified majority voting on key foreign policy and defence matters.

Such voting modality would require 15 of the 27 member states to be in agreement – as long as they represent more than 65% of the EU’s population of 450 million.

The system favours France and Germany, the EU’s two most populous countries.

“The fact that now everything requires unanimity has proven to slow down our ability to react in instances where speed is of the essence,” an EU diplomat told EURACTIV.

“If we want to be a geopolitical actor, we need to be able to act quickly and decisively,” they added.

Hesitant members

While EU member states and institutions agree the bloc is too often slow to act, especially in crisis situations, previous attempts to change its voting method have failed because smaller countries, and in the past, Eastern European states in particular, fear their policy concerns could be disregarded.

Opponents argue they could lose out if all decisions were made via qualified majority voting, currently used for most EU business but not for certain circumscribed areas including foreign and security policy as it represents core national sovereignty.

“If there is one thing that the past decade has proved to us, then it is that European Europeans have not been properly listened to when it comes to Russia and some Western European countries still believe that they were absolutely right to disregard us for our ‘Russophobia’,” an Eastern European diplomat told EURACTIV.

“I can ask you right away – what would happen to Russia sanctions or the decision to protect some smaller European countries, not necessarily a military but political way, if the big Western European countries decide it’s not politically or economically feasible,” they added.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer spoke out against the proposal, stressing that finding consensus within the EU can be “exhausting”, but that this was “the added value of democracy and diversity”.

“The diversity of European countries is not a burden,” Nehammer said on Thursday as he addressed the Austrian parliament.

“The discussions that we have in the council until three thirty in the morning (are) occasionally a little bit exhausting, but worth having,” he added.

Multiple hurdles

A simple majority of 14 out of 27 member states is needed to open talks on treaty change.

Any legally binding agreement on the issue, however, would require all 27 EU member states’ ratification.

An additional hurdle is that some EU member states would likely hold a referendum on the issue – a step that in 2005 resulted in the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty.

The group said it aimed to coordinate with EU institutions and work closely with all member states, inviting other countries to join its reform drive.

Read more with EURACTIV

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