The decision-making rules of the European Union (EU) are defined in an incomplete contract signed by 15 national governments. The design of the contract defines the set of policy issues where it applies – in decision-making rules i.e. the majority rules and the division of powers among the...

This Paper studies some of the many options facing EU leaders when choosing a viable voting system for the EU25+. It provides quantitative estimates of the efficiency and power distributions of the various EU voting schemes that are being considered. It also provides intuition on how various...

The EU declares to provide support for the rural and poor regions of its member states. However, recent research shows that past EU budget allocations (in EU-15) can largely be explained by measures of the distribution of voting power in the Council of Ministers deciding on the bulk of EU...

In this paper, we evaluate the impact of Turkey's membership on EU voting. The aspects that we discuss are decision-making efficiency and the distribution of power in the EU's leading decision making body the Council of Ministers. We compare two alternative Council voting rules: those accepted...

This Paper contributes ideas and analysis to the ongoing EU reform debate. It consists of three distinct parts: voting in the Council of Ministers, restructuring the ECB's Governing Council, and the setting of enlargement “examination” dates. The IGC currently focuses on Council voting,...

The paper analyses the appointment of the European Commission as a strategic game between members of the EU's Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The focal equilibrium results in Commissioners that duplicate policy preferences of national Council representatives. Different internal...

Economic convergence of the new member states (NMS) of the EU towards the old EU countries (EU-15), not only in terms of real income, but also in nominal terms, is of paramount importance for the whole of the EU. We build a dynamic CGE model, starting from the Balassa-Samuelson two-sector...

We examine national effects on the common policies of the European Union (EU). The paper establishes a difference between national influence on voting outcomes and policies. It is assumed that policies of the EU are public goods and Holler's public good power index is applied. The method is...

This Paper examines the economic effects of the opening of the former Soviet Union. The analysis carried out in the Paper is two-fold. First we simulate the impact of the eastern enlargement of the EU and, second, we analyse how deeper integration between the EU and Russia contributes to this....

Probabilistic measures of a priori voting power are useful tools to asses actors' influence on collective decision-making either for the purpose of designing a voting organ or to model particular policy cases. This paper makes an attempt to reduce a dynamic voting process into a cooperative...