Flexible Integration, EMU and Relative Voting Power in the EU.

This paper studies the implications of flexible integration in the European Union. It analyses the voting power of member states in the Council of Ministers when differently sized subgroups of the EU are set up. European Monetary Union is referred to as the most important example of flexible integration. The Banzhaf-Index is calculated to study the distribution of voting power in the decision making process according to the stability and growth pact. The results show considerable fluctuations, especially for smaller countries, in relative voting power, the latter being defined as the relation between voting power and relative voting weight. Copyright 2000 by Kluwer Academic Publishers