I would like to understand wich is the foresseable future of the
decision-making processes in the EU as regards to:
- new entrants (10 states + 3) and their impacts on the length of the
decisions in the EU
- which major changes did introduce the European Constitution as
regards the decision-making processes
- the impacts of the popular consultations in France and in Holland on
the decision-making processes in the EU
- possible solutions to reduce decision-making time and reduce the
unanimity rule in the EU

First, let me explain the background of the EU.

In 1950 Robert Schuman (minister of foreign affairs in France) came up
with the idea of starting a new alliance to prevent an other world war
from happening. It started with 6 countries: Holland, Belgium,
Germany, Italy, France and Luxembourg. The use of veto's was
acceptable and because of the small amount of members, it was
possible.

23 years later, 1973, the first expansion came: Ireland, Denmark and
the UK. 1981 Greece. Spain and Portugal in 1986, Austria, Sweden and
Finland in 1995.

At this point EU consisted of 15 countries and the way it worked when
the EU was small was no longer applicable for the EU in this size. And
now that the EU consists of 25 countries, it is not working.





The constitution would change this. Most veto's will be gone and the
decision process will change dramaticly. Instead of looking at the
size of a country to determine the importance of the vote (right now
it means that Germany and France can decide practically everything),
EU gets an other system.

To accept a proposal, at least 55% of the members need to approve it
and those members must at least have 65% of the citizens. In this way,
the bigger countries can't decide what is going on and the little
countries can't unite to get everything they want.





To keep managing the EU possible, these changes must be approved.

But there are two options: Either the constitution is accepted or not.
If it is accepted, this will be the biggest change in the decision
making process and if it is rejected, the old way will be used
indefinitely, causing decisions being slowed down.


Apart from this, there is an other change. The countries that have had
a referendum to let the people decide what to do, are thinking about
using referendums more. In the future it is possible that the
Europeans will go to the  voting booth more often.






The impact of the choice of Holland and France is difficult to
predict, because the EU will make it's decision when all countries
have given their vote. The Dutch politics realize now that the Dutch
people are having a lot of trouble with some of the decisions made in
the Europian parliament. For instance, Holland pays significantly more
money to the EU than other countries. The 'No' against the
constitution has changed a lot of minds in the Dutch politics.






The official EU website is: http://europa.eu.int/