The outsize influence of small states is fading in the EU

Have you ever EUEUEUEUEUsat at a table so large you needed opera glasses to see what was happening at the other end? Such is the fate of those involved in gatherings of the . In Brussels, meetings with more than two dozen attendees—one from each of 27 member states, plus various hangers-on—are the norm. The upshot of everyone having a seat at the table, both metaphorically and literally, is a rather odd distribution of power. For whereas a handful of participants represent countries with tens of millions of citizens each, the fellow from Malta is there by dint of a population the size of a couple of Parisian . The big beasts of the , notably France and Germany, hold plenty of sway. But a club which is happy to negotiate through the night to reach consensus is one that ends up giving a disproportionate amount of power to the likes of Ireland, Luxembourg or the Baltics. Alas for the tiddlers, the era of small-state privilege may be drawing to an end.Three elements give Europe’s bantam states their unexpected heft. One is their sheer number: 15 countries in the have populations of under 10m, jointly making up just 14% of the bloc’s 448m. When the club’s leaders walk down the red carpet on their way to Brussels summits, Olaf Scholz representing 84m Germans has to jostle with three Baltic leaders whose combined population of 6m would not place them in the top five most populous . The second element is that, unlike America, the is more akin to an intergovernmental confederation than a fully formed union. Thus all countries appoint one member to the European Commission and one judge to the ’s top court, for example. Many decisions have to be agreed to unanimously, notably on tax or foreign affairs: with those dossiers, all national governments enjoy a veto, greatly magnifying the power of the “smalls”. Finally, population-challenged states nab plenty of top jobs, often as compromise candidates: becoming the commission’s president is a habitual retirement gig for outgoing Luxembourgish prime ministers.