Luxembourg Compromise - in Practice

In Practice

The Luxembourg compromise was, in fact, not a compromise: it was an agreement to disagree. Whereas all Member States accepted that, in a situation where a Member State's important national interests were at stake, an attempt should be made to find a solution acceptable to all, they did not agree a to what should happen if no such solution was found within a reasonable period of time. France considered that the discussions should continue indefinitely. All other Member States took the view that a vote should be taken in accordance with the treaties.

In practice, in the years following the Luxembourg compromise, very little qualified majority voting took place in Council. This was partly due to a reluctance to force a new crisis with France, but the tendency was reinforced in 1973 by the accession of new Member States who essentially shared the French view on these matters.

Together, France, the UK and Denmark constituted a large enough minority to prevent decisions even by a qualified majority. In other words, if a matter were put to the vote against the express national interests of any Member State, it would not get through as these countries would not vote for a proposal in such circumstances. It therefore became habitual to negotiate on all texts, virtually line by line, until all member States agreed, before taking a decision in Council.

By the 1980s, this working method was coming under increasing strain. A number of negative consequences were becoming increasingly apparent: - such a decision-making procedure was grossly inefficient (it took 17 years, for instance, to agree on a directive on the mutual recognition of the qualifications for architects); - virtually any Community policy or action could only be the lowest common denominator acceptable to all Member States; -the Commission's right of initiative, and the role of the European Parliament, were reduced - such detailed and time-consuming negotiations could not be carried out by Ministers alone, but by national civil servants, which led to a bureaucratization of the whole Community system.

Above all, it became apparent that, while unanimity when agreeing on new Community policies was one thing, unanimity for the management or revision of existing Community policies was another. In these cases, the Community as a whole had a vital interest in ensuring that it could take rapid decisions, but it was clear that national ministers were quite capable of deeming almost anything to be an 'important national interest' when their state had an advantage in the status quo. CAP reforms for instance, were all too easy to block by any Member State gaining from the system, even when this was at huge expense to the Community as a whole. This applied in varying degrees to all Community policies and to all Member States. The right of veto proved to be the dictatorship of the minority, used for selfish national interests.

The first major crack in the practice of unanimity came in 1982 when the UK attempted to block the final adoption of the annual package of farm prices (details of which it had already agreed to) in order to extract concessions in separate negotiations on the Community's budget. This was perceived by other Member States to be almost a form of blackmail. The Community had to decide urgently on the agricultural prices for that year, and Britain was not objecting to the contents of that decision but merely using its supposed right of veto to extract concessions on another matter. This attitude provoked a sufficient majority of Member States - including France - to take part in a vote openly putting Britain in a minority, and adopting the package. This was possible because the "bottom line", constitutionally, was the treaty provision for majority voting in this area, rather than the political understanding (and a disputed one at that) of the Luxembourg Compromise.