The use of unanimity by the Council of the EU throughout accession negotiations is a major source of uncertainty for countries seeking EU membership. Member states retain numerous veto points at which they can obstruct the accession path of candidate countries. As a result, the pace of a candidate country’s EU accession often appears disconnected from its progress in implementing reforms. However, the EU Treaties do not require unanimity at intermediate stages along the accession path. This practice is set out only in the Negotiating Frameworks of candidate countries, which govern their accession talks.
In recent years, various ideas have been advanced to reform the Council’s decision-making procedures, including replacing unanimity with qualified majority voting (QMV) at some (or all) intermediate stages of accession negotiations. Despite their advantages, most reform proposals share a central blind spot: they treat the content of accession negotiations as a black box. Yet this is puzzling, given that the Council’s role in the sequence of accession negotiations varies by topic and issue. In most negotiating chapters, the Council’s default task is to check whether a candidate country complies with the acquis. In other cases, the Council’s role involves political bargaining over transitional periods, derogations, safeguard clauses, and budgetary provisions. And in policy fields where the acquis is thin or non-existent (e.g. foreign policy), the Council’s decisions reflect broader political judgments on a candidate country’s accession.
In plain terms, accession talks involve three tasks: making political choices about a country’s membership, negotiating the terms on which it joins, and verifying that it meets the EU’s common rules. Building on this threefold distinction, our new GEO-POWER-EU study proposes dividing Council decisions into three tracks: the constitutional-sovereignty track, the accession terms and conditions track, and the regulatory alignment track.
The constitutional-sovereignty track covers policy areas where the Council’s role is to exercise political discretion on issues of constitutional, foreign-policy, or member-state sensitivity. These policy areas comprise Cluster 1 (Fundamentals), Cluster 6 (External Relations), Chapter 34 (Institutions), and Chapter 35 (Other Issues). This track captures the core issues – such as the rule of law, minority rights, foreign policy, and bilateral disputes – on which member states most frequently exercise their veto power to defend vital national interests. Within this track, we propose that the Council switch to reinforced QMV and supplement it with an emergency brake mechanism.
The Treaties set different thresholds for reinforced QMV in different circumstances. A suitable threshold is found in Article 238(2) TFEU: decisions would require approval from at least 72% of member states (20 out of 27 countries), representing at least 65% of the EU population. The emergency brake could be modelled on the mechanism described in Article 31(2) TEU: if a member state invokes ‘vital and stated reasons of national policy’, the matter would be referred to the European Council for a decision by consensus. In this way, member states could be certain that their concerns would be addressed at the highest political level.
The accession terms and conditions track covers Cluster 5 (Resources, Agriculture and Cohesion), in which the Council enters into substantive talks with candidate countries on the distribution of costs and benefits, through the negotiation of transitional periods, derogations, and budgetary provisions. As seen in previous rounds of enlargement, candidate countries’ integration into the Common Agricultural Policy, their entitlements to Cohesion and Structural Funds, and their contributions to the EU budget have often been settled through difficult negotiations. Key issues include phasing in EU direct payments, setting production quotas, allocating regional development funds, and establishing financial contribution baselines.
On these issues, member states know that transitional arrangements under negotiation are time-limited. Accession negotiations are not designed to produce permanent exceptions. In our view, the Council could reach decisions on this track via reinforced QMV, without an emergency brake, so as to avoid paralysing accession negotiations.
The regulatory alignment track covers policy areas where EU legislation is extensive and largely codified, leaving relatively little room for discretion. It comprises Clusters 2 (Internal Market), 3 (Competitiveness and Inclusive Growth), and 4 (Green Agenda and Sustainable Connectivity). In these clusters, the Council's primary task is to verify whether a candidate country’s domestic framework meets technical requirements. We therefore propose using reverse QMV for all intermediate decisions in these areas. Under this rule, the Commission’s recommendation is deemed adopted unless the Council, acting by QMV, decides within 90 days to reject it. This procedure, which presumes tacit Council adoption, was incorporated into the 2020 Revised Methodology and further elaborated in candidate countries’ Negotiating Frameworks for use in certain cases of stagnation or backsliding. To protect national interests, the model includes an interest safeguard clause. If a Draft Common Position or a Council decision to provisionally close a chapter under Clusters 2–4 contained a provision deviating from the immediate and full application of the acquis, the decision would automatically move to reinforced QMV.
The model does not question the Council’s central role throughout the process. It reallocates member states’ influence to where they most need it. Preventing member states from obstructing negotiations in Clusters 2–5 over unrelated bilateral disputes would restore the transparency and predictability of EU conditionality.
The three-track reform model could be adopted without a Treaty amendment through a unanimous Council decision, followed by revisions to the Negotiating Frameworks of candidate countries. The reform would also be introduced in all future Negotiating Frameworks (e.g. that for Bosnia and Herzegovina).
The model does not underestimate the effort required to convince all member states to give up their vetoes over certain clusters at all intermediate stages of accession negotiations. Instead, it offers a workable compromise. Supporters of QMV would see a substantial increase in the predictability, transparency, and fairness of accession negotiations, as well as in the credibility of EU enlargement conditionality. Member states that favour unanimity would trade a limited loss of control over less politically sensitive issues for greater legitimacy in defending their national interests. Ultimately, the three-track model provides an alternative path for gradually moving away from unanimity across all intermediate stages of accession negotiations.