ABSTRACT
The treaty revision negotiations initiated by the German European Union (EU) Presidency in the wake of the French and Dutch 'No' votes in the Constitutional Treaty referenda created a challenge for the whole EU. The decision-making system in the EU is not only to inform about effectiveness of the Union but more broadly to tell about its character, its nature and strength. This is why the issue of vote allocation and the decision-making power of individual member states is not merely a technical problem but indeed a political one determining the influence of those who participate in the system. The system for qualified majority voting (QMV) agreed in the Nice Treaty was based on weighted votes. The new system, proposed in the draft Constitutional Treaty (CT) was based on the demographic criterion. The Polish proposal enables all EU citizens to achieve equal voting power without regard to the population size of the member state where they reside or come from.
