December 06, 2006

Disagreement on giving up veto rights

• Wednesday, 6 December 2006

Currently all judicial agreements on EU level must be agreed unanimously by all 25 states.
The European Commission says the fight against terrorism shows the need to be able to reach decisions by majority. Therefore the Commission wants national vetoes to be replaced with qualified majority voting - a system weighted according to countries' size under which no individual state holds a veto. Franco Frattini, the EU's justice commissioner, said: "We can no longer tolerate a situation where one country of 25 opposes a decision." After a meeting in Brussels, it is clear that at least 14 member states want to keep control of issues like counter terrorism and cross-border policing. British home secretary John Reid said there was now clearly a large majority of EU governments who opposed giving up the veto in such a sensitive area. He said: "There's a clear and probably overwhelming majority against [giving up the veto]. That's our view. That's the view of our governments.“ - "We should not, by using weasel words, attempt to revisit this at a higher level when there's such a clear majority." Nevertheless the topic was put on the agenda of the Intergovernmental Conference in Brussels next week. Source: BBC

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