Who dominates the EU voting system?

At the weekend, a neighbour complained that her problem with the EU was “the way it’s run entirely by Germany” (“especially after what they did in the war”).

Another of my friends has commented on his Facebook timeline that the UK is always “quickly outvoted” (not borne out by our success rate, but never mind…).

In the European parliament it’s tricky to define what it means for the UK to win or lose a vote, because voting tends to be along the lines of party blocs rather than national lines. If the bloc the UK’s Conservative MEPs belong to abstains, the one our Labour MEPs belong to votes one way, and the bloc our UKIP MEPs belong to votes the other, which way did the UK vote?

It’s simpler – sort of – for the Council of Ministers. There, each country has effectively one representative, so it’s easy to define how the “UK” votes. But the rules for a majority are complicated, to make sure small countries such as Malta don’t get power out of proportion to their size but also don’t get bullied by the big players. One country, one vote would give small countries disproportionate power, but weighting the votes to effectively give one EU citizen one vote would let the representatives of the most populous countries ignore the little ones, and that’s unfair too. (Actually, it’s provable that any system would be unfair – the EU, just like the UK, simply has to choose the unfairness it can best live with.)

There are mathematical techniques for assessing the relative power of voters in complex voting systems. It’s not as simple as looking for simple majorities. If, for example, in the UK Labour got 45% of the parliamentary seats, Conservatives 45%, Liberal Democrats 6% and others 4%, Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats would all have equal power (and the others have none). Any two of those three could force a measure through (or block a measure); no one of them could do it alone (all this is ignoring backbench rebellions).

So instead of using simple counts of numbers, we need to use a voting power index, which measures how much power a voter has to actually sway the outcome of a vote. Voting power indexes are tricky to compute, but fortunately the Vienna University of Economics and Business has done it for us.

So who holds the power? Here are the power weightings for the most common system used in the Council of Ministers. France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom are in equal first place (with Spain and Poland close behind). Far from being a minor player, being pushed around, we’re one of the biggest players – we’re one of the ones doing the pushing.

Edit: Incorrect references to the Council of Europe corrected.

France	29
Germany	29
Italy	29
Un. Kingdom	29
Spain	27
Poland	27
Romania	14
Netherlands	13
Belgium	12
Greece	12
Portugal	12
Cz. Republic	12
Hungary	12
Austria	10
Sweden	10
Bulgaria	10
Denmark	7
Ireland	7
Finland	7
Lithuania	7
Slovakia	7
Luxembourg	4
Cyprus	4
Estonia	4
Latvia	4
Slovenia	4
Malta	3

More good than bad

Well, what a day to start blogging.

I spent the evening performing and MCing at a cabaret in memory of my longest standing and closest friend, Derek Collins, unaware of what was developing in Paris.

Profits from the evening went to a charity that had given Derek a lot of help. That’s not why I took part in the cabaret: I committed to it before I knew that would happen, so I’m not going to claim any credit for my charity work. But the event raised a bit of money for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), which was a nice side-effect of what we – well, at least I – just did for fun and in memory of Derek. Hopefully it will help make someone’s life a little better.

All the news tonight is of terror and atrocity, which given the events of the night is completely right and proper. And of course, a little amateur cabaret in a cellar in London isn’t going to make the news anywhere.

But I wonder how many things happened this evening that made the world – at least somebody’s world a better place?

How many people dropped a few coins in a charity box?

How many people put their arms around someone who was hurting?

How many people made a meal for someone who was unable to do it?

How many people performed some random act of kindness?

How many people made the world better this evening?

If we add it all up, I’m convinced that the tiny acts of unreported good would far outweigh even the worst atrocities we see on the TV, read in our newsfeeds.

So while my thoughts are with those who have been injured, the loved ones of those killed, and those who will probably suffer in misdirected reprisals, I also remember this:

The news might tell me the truth, but it doesn’t tell me the whole truth.

Even in times of darkness, the good outweighs the bad.