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Making European laws
How do EU laws get made?
The European Commission monitors the functioning of the EU.
Where problems (for instance inequalities in trading) arise it may draft a new law or suggest other measures to tackle them, provided the necessary powers have been given to the EU in the Treaties.
The European Parliament and Council will review, and may amend, the Commission’s proposals. In many cases, especially Single Market measures, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers are ‘co-legislators' - sharing decision-making power.
In sensitive areas (tax, foreign policy, and defence) every member nation has a veto: if just one country opposes the law then it won’t be passed.
In most other areas decisions are taken in the Council of Ministers through “qualified majority voting” (QMV).
For a law to be approved under QMV, at least half the member nations must vote for it. What’s more these votes should represent at least 62 per cent of the total population of the EU. And, finally a minimum of 232 votes out of a total of 321 weighted votes (allocated to each country according to population) must also be in favour.
In practice this system has proved highly effective in pulling down trade barriers, ensuring that all member countries have equal access to each other’s markets.
Once a law has been agreed at European level member states are obliged to ensure their national laws are consistent with it.
They must do so even if they opposed the law in the Council of Ministers but were outvoted by the majority.
Any nation joining the EU must agree that laws passed at a European level take precedence over national law.
Without this principle – called the Primacy of European Law – the EU would not function. Members could pick and choose which laws they obeyed, making those laws meaningless.
For instance when France tried to ban certain beef imports from the UK, the Court ruled that the ban was illegal and forced France to abandon it.