This may include advertisements from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. He said in his first major address to the Bundestag lower house that it must become a rule that we at the European Council can decide based on a qualified majority in areas where today is not the case. This is not losing sovereignty, it is gaining sovereignty. The proposal is likely to cause some in the EU to believe that it will threaten the veto powers of member states when it comes to issues that require unanimity. The Council has to vote on a number of matters that the member states consider to be sensitive. Common foreign and security policies, EU membership, EU finances, are some examples in which the principle of unanimity is mandatory for the bloc.
The idea had already been explored in June, by German foreign minister Heiko Maas, who said the EU should abolish the right of individual member states to veto foreign policy measures as the EU 27- nation bloc could not allow itself to be held hostage by the people who hobble European foreign policy with their vetoes. If you do that, you risk the cohesion of Europe. Even if that means we can't vote, the veto has to go. Viktor Urban blocked an EU statement in April criticising China's new security law in Hong Kong, which undermined the efforts of the EU to confront Beijing's restrictions on freedoms in the former British colony.
Mr Orban said that the European left, led by the German left, was attacking Hungary because of its refusal to sign a politically inconsequential and frivolous joint declaration on Hong Kong. These declarations make the EU appear like a pathetic paper tiger, Mr Orban wrote on his official website. He said: There must be an end to the preoccupation in Brussels with flaunting and concocting declarations. In recent years, the common foreign policy approach, motivated by domestic political considerations, has resulted in the European Union's foreign policy stance becoming a laughing stock. The German proposal sparked the fury of Nexit campaigners in the Netherlands who warned that the move would allow big powers like Germany and France to decide arbitrarily for smaller countries in the bloc.