The foreign ministers of the seven European Union countries called for a move away from the principle of unanimity in decision-making in the EU's common foreign and security policy and a wider use of qualified majority voting.
This is stated in the joint position of the ministers of the seven EU states, published by Politico.
The heads of diplomacy of Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia and Spain presented a joint position.
Ministers said that the EU needs to strengthen its ability to act in the field of foreign and security policy in times of crisis and, as the EU enlarges, successful European integration requires the effective functioning of its institutions.
"The vast majority of decisions in EU foreign policy require unanimity - which in some cases can slow down our ability to act. It is against these rules, not because of them, that we were able to agree on 10 packages of sanctions against Russia in response to its aggressive war against a sovereign state," - the ministers explained.
In this regard, they proposed to use the so-called "constructive moderation" more widely in decision-making. This principle allows a decision to be taken when one of the states opposes, but does not contest the decision, and thus does not stop the other 26 members.
