ABSTRACT
The Council of Ministers, the senior legislature of the European Union (EU), is an intergovernmental body in which some matters are decided by unanimity but the most important voting rule is qualified majority voting (QMV), which is being used for an increasing number of decisions. Under the Reform Treaty's proposals, the number of votes will be strictly proportional to population sizes but, under the system determined by the Nice Treaty and under the previous system, the voting weights were not directly based on populations in a transparently mathematical way. It has been claimed that a weighted voting rule based directly on populations will implement a desirable democratic principle of equality. The Penrose index is a measure of absolute voting power in the sense of meaning the country's likelihood of being decisive when all voting outcomes are considered on an equal basis. The conclusion is that the double majority system would create large disparities in voting power in different countries.
