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France Rejects German Demand for Extra Votes in EU Council
France rejected November 29 a German demand for extra votes in the European Union (EU) Council of General Affairs and insisted that France must have the same number of votes as Germany.
French Delegate-Minister for European Affairs Pierre Moscovici said the equality of votes in the EU Council of General Affairs is not a matter of demography, but a matter of principle established when the EU was founded.
He said that when the European Economic Community was first established in 1957, the then German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer worked out the formula of equal votes between West Germany and France.
"In 1957, when we signed the Treaty of Rome, there were nearly 45 million Frenchmen and 57 million Germans as it was understood then that Germany potentially included East Germany," said Moscovici.
"So we think that from the philosophical point of view, it appears legitimate to keep a perpetual equality," he said.
Ten days ahead of the EU summit in Nice, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Tuesday that Germany should have more votes than others in the future EU institutions.
Germany bases its argument on the fact that it has a 82 million population after reunification, more than those of France, Britain and Italy, with which it shares the same number of votes now.
The Nice summit is expected to solve the problem of EU institutional reforms including a re-allocation of the votes of EU member countries in the Council of General Affairs, which decide EU policies.
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