As EU decision-making remains plagued by disunity, Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin (Fianna Fáil, Renew) suggested that the threat to exclude countries from the EU as well as “constructive abstention” could be “creative ways” for the bloc to avoid deadlock.
Deadlock situations in key votes have long plagued the EU because decisions in areas such as foreign policy require the unanimous consent of all EU governments.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in particular, has used this veto power as leverage, most recently blocking additional EU funding for Ukraine.
Yet, according to Martin, there are “creative ways” to resolve the paralysing impasse, which does not require a tedious reform of the EU treaties.
“There are creative ways through which you can facilitate effective decision-making,” Martin said at an event of the Jacques Delors Centre think tank in Berlin on Thursday (18 January).
Even new mechanisms to unilaterally exclude countries from the EU were “worth considering”, the foreign minister and deputy prime minister (Tánaiste) confirmed on request while admitting this would be “difficult in real terms”.
“But there are limits to what we should put up with,” he said.
Above all, though, Martin highlighted the “constructive abstention” tool whereby a member state abstains from voting on a proposal rather than voting against it.
“That’s a creative way of allowing a country to retain its position, (…) without stopping the vast majority of the EU member states from doing what they believe is correct,” he said.
Orbán had made prominent use of this strategy at the most recent EU summit when he “went for a coffee” while the other European leaders voted to start accession talks with Ukraine, according to the German magazine Spiegel.
Spanish representatives were said to have done the same this week to facilitate an EU naval mission tackling Houthi missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea.
To Ireland, using such methods is particularly attractive as the Irish constitution requires most EU treaty changes to be ratified via a referendum, with an uncertain outcome.
EU reform “not a prerequisite” for Germany
Germany, in particular, has insisted that institutional reform was required to allow for the admission of new member states, such as Ukraine while preventing the EU from running into an unbreakable deadlock.
Nevertheless, after meeting with Martin later in the day, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock paid tribute to the matter’s sensitivity, framing German demands in softer terms.
“[Institutional reform] is not a prerequisite [for enlargement] for the German government”, she claimed, instead choosing to speak of the two processes going “hand in hand”.
Many smaller members fear a loss of power through the extension of decision-making by a qualified majority (QMV), which reduces their weight in votes.
To find consensual ways to move away from unanimity, Germany launched the ‘Group of Friends on Qualified Majority Voting in EU Common Foreign and Security Policy’ last year. Ireland joined in December as an observer.
As Martin stressed on Thursday, despite being a smaller member state, the Irish government has shown a relatively constructive attitude toward a QMV extension.
[Edited by Alice Taylor]
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