Constructive abstention within the European Union
The purpose of the attempt at rationalization carried out within the framework of the Traité of Amsterdam was also to make more effective decision making as regards PESC (Politics foreign and of common safety.) This one above all and is especially governed, sovereignty obliges, by the rule of the unanimity . This one proved already paralyzing in a Europe to fifteen and more still from the point of view of the future widenings. As, after having posed the rule of the unanimity, the new text of the treaty lays out as
“The abstentions from the attending members or represented do not prevent the adoption of these decisions.
Any member of the Council which abstains from at the time of a vote can, then, match his abstention from a formal declaration. In this case, it is not held to apply the decision, but it accepts that the decision engages the Union. In a spirit of mutual solidarity, the Member State concerned abstains from any action likely to enter in conflict with the action of the Union based on this decision or to make there obstacle and the other Member States respect its position. If the members of the Council who match their abstention from such a declaration represent more of the third of the affected voices of the weighting envisaged in article 205, paragraph 2, of the treaty establishing the European Community, the decision is not adopted.”
(Article 23, Traité of Maastricht)
This “ constructive abstention ” is a minimal and essential precondition to the widening, which makes it possible to go further and more quickly, without undergoing the opposition, even the inertia of certain Member States. All the interest lies in this possibility of acting as spite of the lack of unanimity, and it is in that the Abstention is known as constructive. Thus, a State cannot be opposed to a decision insofar as it is not constrained to apply it. It must nevertheless express its divergence in a “formal declaration”, which will fatally take the form of a justification and thus of a questioning of the relevance of the position adopted by the Union. Such a declaration will obérera the range of the common decision largely, by breaking the political principle of solidarity, especially if it is about an important State. One can thus fear that if one of the great States of the Union expresses its doubts as for the relevance of a decision, the simple possibility of its abstention will result in deferring the question.
See too
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