With veto-wielding Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban on his way out, the European Union has the opportunity to make progress on several fronts where unanimity among member states is needed. However, it needs to act fast. There is a short window of time before another populist government comes into power and adopts extractive veto strategies. It must use this opportunity to extend qualified-majority voting.
The best option, in the short term, is to immediately activate the so-called ‘passerelle clause’ that allows the EU to unanimously switch to majority voting in foreign policy decisions under Art. 31.3 TEU. By doing so, the EU would protect itself from future attempts to emulate the extractive veto strategies that Orban mastered. While this would leave some other critical areas still under unanimity rule (eg defence and military policy, as well as the budget), Art. 31.3 could be triggered quickly by a unanimous vote in the European Council, having an immediate effect and not requiring Treaty revision.
Regardless of whether the EU successfully activates Art. 31.3 in the short term, eventually a new legal basis will be needed. In the spirit of Mario Draghi’s ‘Pragmatic Federalism’, those countries with greater ambition could agree on a new European Security Treaty establishing a common foreign and security policy, based on super-majority voting. The Treaty should be embedded as much as possible in the current EU institutional framework.
There are precedents: during the euro area debt crisis, when the EU’s treaty framework proved inadequate, institutional creativity helped European integration move forward with two intergovernmental instruments outside the ordinary treaty architecture, namely the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (TSCG).
Granted, these treaties have their issues. First, the role of the Commission was limited to acting as a secretariat of the new institutions. Second, the new treaties did not create majority voting. Third, being outside the Union’s legal and institutional framework, they have limited democratic legitimacy. However, they were the consequence of specific institutional preferences. Nothing would prevent a new treaty from assigning competences to the European Commission, even when treaty membership does not include all EU countries. The 1967 Merger Treaty serves as a precedent, when three legally separate organisations derived from three distinct treaties were unified into the European Commission, but maintained separate legal bases.
A European Security Treaty should follow the following key principles:
First, majority voting, in some form, should be the rule rather than the exception. A security instrument that reproduces extractive vetoes would merely duplicate the current problem in a different legal shell. States joining such a treaty would do so precisely because they accept that strategic credibility requires the capacity to decide in the interest of the majority. To be fully democratically legitimate, a majority of MEPs of the participating members would also need to agree to any major decision, such as joint security purchases or funding.
Second, the Treaty should cover, at a minimum, the following subjects: sanctions policy; creation, ownership and command of European strategic assets such as military satellites; procurement and production of certain defence goods; and support for partners under attack. A European Defence Mechanism could form the basis of a European Security Treaty. Finally, under the European Security Treaty, Europe would gradually build up its joint forces, building on the EU Battle Group and possibly the Joint Expeditionary Forces, with a focus on strategic enablers and disruptive military technologies such as drone warfare.
Third, the Treaty should include a guaranteed annual revenue source of 0.5% of the GDP of its member states. To safeguard national budgetary autonomy, the Treaty can only be changed by unanimity. For participating states, these expenses would count fully towards their military budgets and would represent savings, as costs for the development of vital military assets would be shared across a larger tax base. Based on this guaranteed revenue, the European Defence Mechanism could borrow to enable funding during crises and for the rapid build-up of strategic capabilities that can be used over decades.
Europe has already moved incrementally in this direction, including through common borrowing and new defence instruments. But incrementalism is no longer enough when geopolitical shocks are accelerating faster than institutional adaptation.
Courageous policy makers contemplating such ambitious institutional reform will find citizens on their side. Survey evidence demonstrates that citizens consistently prefer majority voting in matters of security and foreign policy.
A European Security Treaty is neither costless, nor politically easy. It would create tensions with the existing EU framework and would require careful design. But these governance issues are solvable and cannot be an excuse to passively remain victims of unfolding global events. The time has come for a new treaty that enables majority decisions in this new geopolitical era.
About the authors
Francesco Nicoli is associate professor of political science at the Politecnico Institute of Turin.
Roel Beetsma is Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Macroeconomics.
Guntram Wolff is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel.