[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 155 (Friday, December 15, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2210]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             EUROPEAN UNION

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. DOUG BEREUTER

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, December 15, 2000

  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, Benjamin Franklin once wrote in Poor 
Richard's Almanac, ``Don't throw stones at your neighbors', if your own 
windows are glass.'' This sage advice written in 1736 is still current 
today and certainly applicable to those across the Atlantic who have 
focused on the problems in Florida and mocked the United States 
electoral system. While the closeness of the vote in Florida resulted 
in exercise of a constitutional process in the U.S. that has not had to 
have been used before, the challenges ahead for the European Union as 
it tries to integrate new members and address its own internal voting 
system are just beginning and may be far more difficult to resolve. In 
that regard, this Member recommends to his colleagues I submit the 
following editorial published by the Omaha World Herald on December 9, 
2000, on this subject into the Congressional Record.

                  If the Shoe Fits, EU Should Wear It

       The Florida vote-could mess has triggered a month-long 
     eruption of contemptuous tut-tutting from European leaders 
     and commentators. Finger-wagging scolds from London, Paris 
     and other centers of European enlightenment have taken 
     particular aim at the Electoral College.
       One columnist grumped in The Times of London: ``What moral 
     authority would a man have to hold his finger over the 
     nuclear trigger when he owed his office not to a majority but 
     the byproduct of a bankrupt electoral college?''
       A German writer made do by simply calling the Electoral 
     College ``idiotic.''
       Scratch those European criticisms hard enough, however, and 
     you uncover what could be called, at best, inconsistency and 
     at worst hypocrisy.
       It turns out that one of Europe's most revered 
     institutions, the European Union, has long governed itself by 
     the very principles associated with the Electoral College. 
     That is, the decision-making process for the EU, an 
     association of 15 European countries linked by close economic 
     and political ties, is structured so that small countries are 
     given tremendous added weight and, thus, influence.
       The best illustration is shown by comparing the EU's 
     largest member, Germany, to its smallest, Luxembourg. 
     Germany, with 82 million inhabitants, has a population some 
     205 times that of Luxembourg's of 400,000 (which, 
     coincidentally, is about the size of Omaha's municipal 
     population).
       If the seats that Luxembourg and Germany have on the 
     Council of Ministers, one of the EU's governing bodies, were 
     assigned in proportion to the two countries' actual 
     populations, Luxembourg would control two seats and Germany 
     would control 410. Instead, Luxembourg has two seats and 
     Germany has 10.
       The advantage given to smaller states is even greater in 
     another EU institution, the European Commission. There, the 
     five largest countries each have two seats, while the rest 
     have one. That arrangement resembles the situation in the 
     U.S. Senate, where small states are each accorded precisely 
     the same number of seats as big states.
       The EU gives its smallest members one more advantage, 
     allowing any country, regardless of its size, to exercise a 
     veto on decisions involving taxation and foreign policy.
       In short, if Europeans deride the Electoral College's rules 
     as ``idiotic,'' they should say the same about those of the 
     European Union.
       In recent days the EU's governing rules have been under 
     negotiation as part of the organization's plans to expand its 
     membership to former members of the Soviet bloc and other 
     candidate nations. Representatives from the EU's smallest 
     members have put up quite a fight to defend the prerogatives 
     they've traditionally enjoyed, and protesters have 
     demonstrated on behalf of the same cause, although it appears 
     some watering down of the small-state advantages will 
     ultimately result.
       If European commentators want to understand many of the 
     arguments behind the Electoral College, they don't have to 
     look to America. The debate over those principles is taking 
     place in their own back yard.

     

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