Balance Among Member States

Many federal political systems are composed of sub-units of different population size, creating complex normative puzzles. EU member states with small populations enjoy powers beyond what the principle of “one person, one vote” seems to warrant. Whether over-representation of small states can be defended remains a contested issue in normative political theory. One line of defense for skewed voting weights questions whether majority rule is normatively appropriate for populations divided into majorities and minorities along cultural, ethnic, or other cleavages. In such societies, individuals face different risks of ending up in the minority on important issues. A central consideration is how institutions can promote the trustworthiness of the authorities in a population with deep divisions regarding political issues.

One important implication is that proportional voting weight is not only a mathematical issue, but one that involves crucial normative premises. It may thus be unwarranted to criticize Spain and Poland for their strong refusal to back down from the voting weight agreement of the Nice Treaty, which appeared to give them disproportionately large voting weights. Is it normatively important for citizens to have a roughly equal opportunity to be part of a winning coalition to determine the direction of various policies in pursuit of one’s conception of the common interest? Or is it also normatively important that citizens have a roughly equal opportunity to be part of a blocking coalition, to prevent decisions regarded as unacceptably harmful to the common interest? Or should the normatively legitimate decision rule combine the two, for instance in seeking to equalize citizens’ net opportunity expressed as the probability of ending up in a winning coalition minus the probability of ending up in a losing coalition? Alternatively, the ability to pursue interests may be weighed more or less than the ability to block decisions. These choices of proportional voting weight are clearly not merely based on a value-free notion of proportionality. They require careful reflection on the objectives of democratic decision-making and institutions’ roles in facilitating sufficient trust.

One reason for over-representing small sub-units is to ensure that multiple domestic perspectives can contribute to the deliberations. The DCT provides additional measures that promote such negotiations in public, both by requiring publicity for EU institution proceedings and by ensuring that national parliaments get copies of legislative proposals and Commission consultation documents.

This is indeed a convincing justification for transparency, despite the fact that transparency also forecloses the creative exploration of new alternatives. Other alleged benefits of transparency are contested, such as its causation of fair outcomes. Nevertheless, public access to the arguments surrounding preference changes toward the common good is important for preference formation in the general public. Moreover, transparency may enhance the trustworthiness of institutions, allowing the intergovernmental actors to be held more accountable domestically and removing some suspicions that they abuse their discretion. Such advantages seem well worth the possible costs in effectiveness and efficiency.

A Balancing Act

The DCT furthers important forms of stable balance between the member states and EU institutions, among EU institutions, and among member states within EU institutions. The drafting process and the draft itself confirmed and strengthened three mechanisms that may help build broad support for the institutions themselves: the Convention itself, interlocking federal arrangements, and political parties. All of these mechanisms operated under conditions of greater transparency than previously experienced in most EU processes.

Broadening the competence of national parliaments could have even more fully addressed the challenge of the creeping centralization typical of federations. Such mechanisms may reduce or slow the Union’s ability to reach common decisions, but it does not follow that they reduce the effectiveness and efficiency of the European political order. Effectiveness and efficiency can be determined only on the basis of specified objectives, which include complex mixes of legitimate “European” and “national” interests. Member states blocking unwarranted centralizing decisions is thus not a case of ineffectiveness per se—even though certain EU institutions may hold such acts to run counter to “the European interest.”

The DCT changes the balance among EU institutions, partly by altering the method for selecting Commission President. It remains unclear how this balance is to be assessed, especially because member states may legitimately pursue other objectives than the common European interest, and this may lead the member state government to prefer other candidates for Commission President than those favored by the European Parliament.

The balance among Member States within EU institutions raises unresolved fundamental normative issues concerning which interests of individuals are to be secured by voting, and by what voting weights. The DCT did not succeed in bringing closure to this important subject. One path toward resolving such disagreements may be to explore the grounds for different views on the basis of different valuations of the various sorts of individuals’ interests at stake—non-interference, non-domination, or enhanced capability sets, or even a combination of these three.

The DCT confirms and strengthens several mechanisms that may induce European citizens’ willing support for the institutions themselves. These mechanisms include the somewhat public nature of the Convention debates and their aftermath, “interlocking” federal arrangements, and the increased opportunities for contestation among political parties of issues concerning European level policies. These arguments from the political theory of federalism suggest that the DCT creates a federal European political order that is likely to facilitate trust and trustworthiness among Europeans.