The Impacts of Voting Rules on Acceding EU Member States

We propose a framework by which to observe the consequences of enlargement of the European Union. We outline the sincere positions of the old and new EU members, using a one-dimensional spatial model to predict a range of stable policy outcomes under two proposed sets of voting rules: qualified majority voting (QMV), and a dual majority requiring a majority of the members states encompassing 60% of the EU's population. We show that the positions of the ten joining countries tend to fall outside of the range of stable outcomes under QMV, and even more so under the dual majority rule.