[MUSIC] Let's continue our analysis of the European institutions. The Council of the European Union is the meeting forum of 28 authors where the Ministers of the 28 member states. But why do we find a Council member as avatars? This is because those who sit in the Council are not always the same people as the composition of the Council depends on the subject discussed. If it is about to decide how many fishes can be caught in the European seas, 28 fisheries ministers show up in Brussels to meet and discuss. For immigration matters, 28 affairs ministers will attend the council meeting. If it is about deciding to launch a new special program, ministers in charge of space and research in each country would go to Brussels and so on. What do these avatars do in the council? They generally discuss the proposals sent by the European Commission. During the council meetings the 28 ministers representing their different national interests in political views have to find an agreement if they want to adopt a certain policy. Trying to reach this agreement, national governments struggle against the rest to protect their own interests. Sometimes alliances are formed and bargains are struck. The council has to take a single position, which are the rules of the game if some members still disagree on that proposal. Well, decision-making in the council is formally reached through a voting system that basically follow two lines. Either unanimity voting, and this is applied in sensitive political questions such as taxation, social security, social policy, measures of passport and identity cards. In most of the measures in the common form and security policies including, of course, the fence, but the other system which represents a default option is qualified majority voting. Under this voting system, for a proposal of the commission to pass, the supporting side needs a double majority with two specific thresholds. At least 55% of the number of the member states representing at least 65% of the EU population. The idea is to guarantee the legitimacy of such a vote. By making sure that a significant number of countries are supporting the commission proposal, and at the same time that these countries are representative or the European interest by looking at how many Europeans live in those countries. This system when compared with the previous one, based on a weight voting, highlights the importance of the demographic element. According to the previous system, each member state had not only one point, but many more points depending on it's geographical size. The size of it's population as well as it's economic and political importance. The weight of the vote of each country was the fruit of a political negotiation when, for instance, the German representative was raising his hand or her hand, its weight, the weight of this vault, was 29. The same was true for France, Italy and the UK. But when the Luxembourg minister was raising his hand in support of that particular policy, the weight of this vote was only four. Marta's volt was even less, at three. And the magic and necessary number to be reached was 352 votes to have a decision taken at the council, as you can see, in this example. By going to the website indicated below, you can try to build winning coalition at the council, or at least the way in which the system work until a few months ago. From 2017, this previous system will have completely disappeared. The question of voting has been very sensitive in the negotiations leading to the recent European treaties. Small countries fear that their voice will have no weight in the debate, while big countries don't want decisions to be imposed on them by a coalition of smaller players. Therefore, treaties also instituting what we call a blocking minority. In real life, the council most of the time, takes decision through consensus. Exactly like the European Council does. The voting system is then just used as a threat in negotiations to reach an agreement. As you can see in this chart, taken from the website of our friends at VoteWatch Europe, from 2009 to 2013 countries like Lithuania and Cyprus have been systematically voting exactly like France within the council. The two countries which departed more often from France position where Germany and the UK. But they nonetheless agree with France, respectively 94% and 89% of the time. The ministers sitting in the council live in their own capitals. Berlin, Paris, London. And cannot therefore spend too much time in Brussels, where the council is actually based. Therefore, ministers like heads of states and government rely on some help in Brussels. These are called Permanent Representatives of the Member States. They're ambassadors from each member state together with their different policy teams are based in Brussels, in fact, all proposals for new laws before passing them on to their ministers. Therefore, when they meet at the council, their meetings are called [FOREIGN] which stands form committee of permanent representatives, in French. [FOREIGN] But who runs the council of the European Union? What each European institution such as the European Council, The European Commission and the European Parliament have each a permanent president. The presidency of the council of the European Union rotates among the member states every six months. Let's take a quiz together. Do you know which country holds the presidency in this first semester of 2014? Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Lithuania. Well, the right answer is Greece, and the next one would be Italy. The six month rotating presidencies are organized as trios in order to ensure continuity for an 18-month period. They share common political programs, and they're often an occasion to bring specific issues that some countries may care about more. Today, holding the presidency boils down to little more than promoting a country by hosting numerous high level meetings in that member state. To sum up, what the Council does, please pause this video ,and try to sum up what we have discussed thus far. Let me sum up for you. The Council of the European Union examines and adopts European legislation, coordinates the broad economic policies of European member countries. But also, signs agreements between the EU and other countries, approves the annual European budget and develops the European foreign and defence policies. Yet, remember, the council approval of a new legislative proposal, coming from the European Commission, is not enough to ensure it's adoption. As we will examine in the next class, most of the European legislative decisions, require also the approval by the European Parliament.
