\n Wadephul said Brussels could \u201cmove faster\u201d through qualified majority voting or through agreements among smaller groups of EU member states.\n <\/p>\n
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called on the European Union to remove the requirement for unanimity on a number of key decisions, saying the mechanism has allowed the bloc to be held \u201chostage\u201d by national interests.<\/p>\n
EU leaders have repeatedly voiced frustration with outgoing Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who blocked important decisions.<\/p>\n
Wadephul said Brussels could \u201cmove faster\u201d through qualified majority voting or through agreements among smaller groups of EU member states.<\/p>\n
Decision-making blockades by individual EU countries have \u201csometimes held the EU hostage to national and external interests\u201d, Wadephul said in a speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is linked to his centre-right CDU party.<\/p>\n
EU member states already use qualified majority voting when adopting legislation proposed by the European Commission.<\/p>\n
However, some measures, including sanctions, enlargement, foreign policy decisions and EU tax matters, can still only be adopted unanimously.<\/p>\n
Wadephul stressed that even without the unanimity requirement, Berlin would not abandon the search for consensus.<\/p>\n
Orban\u2019s heavy defeat in Hungary\u2019s mid-April elections brought major relief to many leaders in the 27-member bloc.<\/p>\n
Orban had often delayed decisions on sanctions against Russia and aid to Ukraine after Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion in 2022. Most recently, he held up a \u20ac90 billion, or $106 billion, EU loan for Kyiv.<\/p>\n
In a world marked by conflicts and unstable global relations, the EU must be able to use its collective weight and economic power to defend its interests, Wadephul said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to security, the principle of unanimity can put us in existential danger, because these are matters of life and death,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In his speech, Wadephul also called for Brussels to be given greater powers to suspend EU funds for countries \u201cthat violate our common values\u201d.<\/p>\n
He did not explicitly name Hungary, but the EU was often at odds with Orban\u2019s government over rights and rule-of-law issues and froze part of Budapest\u2019s EU funding.<\/p>\n
On enlargement, Wadephul backed the creation of a \u201cstructured phased process\u201d for joining the EU.<\/p>\n
New countries should go through \u201cgradual integration\u201d into the bloc before becoming full members, he said. This, according to Wadephul, could ease concerns about \u201cpremature\u201d accession. | BGNES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wadephul said Brussels could \u201cmove faster\u201d through qualified majority voting or through agreements among smaller groups of EU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,190],"class_list":{"0":"post-76193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116528295912765879","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}