Which Decision Rule for the Future Council?

Decisions in the Council of Ministers continue to be surrounded by secrecy as far as the details of the decision-making process are concerned. Most of the research on reform efforts has focused on increasing transparency and on facilitating the management of various auxiliary bodies of the Council. In addition, a central focus has been placed on re-weighting of votes among the member states. In this article we argue that the current method of finding agreement and avoiding votes in the Council (`culture of consensus') will be impracticable with enlarged membership. Hence, formalized voting procedures will be needed. We discuss some desiderata of such procedures.