The Impact of Renunciation of Consensus on the Speed of Legislative Process in the European Union

This article assesses whether abandoning consensus in the Council of Ministers has, in practice, accelerated EU law-making. Institutional reforms in the 1990s–2000s pursued two partly competing objectives: strengthening legitimacy by empowering the European Parliament and improving efficiency by expanding the scope for qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council. Against the widespread expectation that QMV should shorten legislative duration, the article asks whether Council voting by qualified majority continues to have an independent accelerating effect once the EU’s evolving institutional environment is taken seriously. The analysis draws on an original dataset of EU directives and regulations adopted as secondary law under the ordinary legislative procedure and the consultation procedure between 1994 and 2019 (N = 2,546). Crucially, unlike most earlier studies that infer Council decision rules from treaty legal bases, the dataset codes the actual decision method in the Council – distinguishing between de jure QMV adopted by consensus and de jure QMV adopted by recorded vote – using Council monthly reports and voting records where necessary.

Methodologically, the article combines descriptive evidence (box plots and moving averages) with survival analysis (a Cox proportional hazards model), allowing the effect of the Council’s decision method to be separated from other determinants of legislative duration and from cross-procedure heterogeneity. The results qualify conventional accounts of “efficiency gains” from replacing unanimity with QMV. Under the ordinary legislative procedure, acts adopted by consensus are, on average, completed faster than acts adopted by qualified-majority vote – consistent with the interpretation that consensus more often reflects low underlying preference dispersion among member states, whereas recourse to voting signals deeper disagreement and more costly bargaining.

Under the consultation procedure, by contrast, mandatory unanimity substantially slows adoption compared with the legal possibility of QMV; yet where QMV is legally available, there is no meaningful difference between adoption by recorded vote and adoption by “voluntary” consensus, underscoring the continued relevance of the Council’s consensus-seeking practices.

Taken together, the findings suggest that the efficiency dividend from extending QMV has been more limited than often assumed, while the empowerment of the European Parliament has imposed larger time costs on EU law-making. The practical scope for further accelerating legislation through additional departures from consensus therefore appears constrained, which has implications for debates on the EU’s capacity to deliver policy under conditions of expanding responsibilities and heightened legitimacy requirements.

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