Luxembourg Compromise - Shift in Attitude

Shift in Attitude

A shift in the attitude of some Member States was confirmed in 1983, on the occasion of the adoption of the Solemn Declaration on European Union by the European Council in Stuttgart. The Declaration itself referred to a need to improve the Community's capacity to act by applying the decision-making procedures laid down in the treaties. In declarations appended to the minutes, however, each Member State laid down its interpretation of when a vote should take place. Only Britain and Denmark supported the original French position of 1965. France and Ireland now spelt out that the national interest in question must relate directly to the subject under discussion and they, like Greece, took the view that the vote should only be postponed if a Member State invokes an '"essential" national interest' "in writing". Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy and the Netherlands took the view that a vote should be held whenever the treaties provide for it.

In 1984, the European Parliament put forward a proposal for a new treaty on European Union, which envisaged the introduction, over a ten-year period, of majority voting without the right of veto for all existing Community policies (except foreign-policy cooperation), but retained unanimity for the introduction of new policies. The response of the Member States, in the form of the Single European Act, was to extend by ten the number of articles in the treaties which required majority voting. This extension was linked for the most part to policy objectives (such as the legislative harmonisations necessary for completing the internal market by 1992), and the follow-up of unanimously-agreed framework decisions (e.g. individual research programmes, following the unanimous adoption of the multi-annual framework for research; and Regional Fund decisions, following the unanimous adoption of the overall regulation for the structural funds).

A change in the treaties could not in itself affect the Luxembourg compromise, as a political agreement with no legal basis, let alone a treaty one. Indeed, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared to the House of Commons that it remained. However, such a change to the treaties, duly ratified by all national parliaments, changed the constitutional framework within which the decisions concerned would be taken, and signified at least an intention to take majority votes more frequently. There would, after all, be little point in modifying the treaties if this were not the case.

The Council followed up this treaty change with an amendment to its internal Rules of Procedure. After a year of negotiations, it agreed in 1987 to change its rules to oblige the President-in Office to move to a vote upon the request of the Commission or the representative of any Member State, provided that the request is supported by a simple majority of Member States. The context was also changed by accession of Spain and Portugal to the European Community. It was no longer clear that states seeking to invoke the Luxembourg compromise would have sufficient support in Council to constitute a blocking minority.

Following these developments there was a reluctance by Member States to risk invoking the compromise and finding it was not accepted. There were even cases in which Member States in the minority, rather than invoke the Luxembourg compromise during a vote, have challenged it in the Court of Justice on grounds of an incorrect legal basis - arguing that an article requiring unanimity should have been used. Gradually, votes were taken on increasingly controversial subjects such as a ban on hormones in meat (leading to a 'trade war' with the United States), permitted radioactivity levels in foodstuffs, rules for trans-frontier television broadcasts, several fishing controversies, foreign aid, and some of the crucial reforms of the CAP. By the time of the negotiation of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991, it was widely recognised that votes would be taken wherever the treaty provided for it.