Friday, March 31, 2017

Post-Brexit power shifts

VoteWatch Europe reports:

With Brexit process triggered, many observers wonder how the equilibrium of powers in the EU Council would change and who will be most successful in influencing the future EU legislation. We have looked at the voting dynamics over the past 7 years (over 22.000 votes of EU governments) to understand what is likely to happen after the UK leaves.

Our analysis is based on the same dataset and methodology that indicated that the UK was increasingly outvoted in the Council in recent years, thus predicting the centrifugal policy orientation of the British government. These are our main new findings:
  1. Coalition building dynamics seem to favour the countries that promote more EU integration;
  2. France, Italy seem in a better position to build majorities or blocking minorities than Germany;
  3. Poland has drifted away from the core of the EU in the past year;
  4. The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark lose the most out of Brexit (they were UK's closest partners);
  5. Political affiliations of the governments play a role, hence the results of upcoming elections in France, Germany, Czechia and Italy are crucial for the future direction of the EU
First published in July 2016, this report has been updated to take into account the latest political developments. 

The full analysis is here,

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