Dimension, Egalitarianism and Decisiveness of European Voting Systems

This paper carries out an analysis of three main aspects that may apply to any of the successive voting systems used for the European Union Council of Ministers from the first one established in the Treaty of Rome in 1958 to the current one established in Lisbon. The procedure we show is mainly illustrated for the voting systems for the European Union enlargement adopted in the Athens summit, held in April 2003, but can be applied to any other. First, it is shown that the dimension of these voting systems does not, in general, reduce. Next, the egalitarian effects of superposing two or three weighted majority games (often introducing additional consensus) are considered. Finally, the decisiveness of these voting systems is evaluated and compared.