Gridlock in EU Council Negotiations

Decision-making in the Council of the EU is generally perceived as consensual. Few Council decisions are contested, and if they are, opposition is confined to a very small number of member states. However, the voting data on which this characterisation is based suffers from a clear selection bias: The Council only takes formal votes when a positive outcome is assured. Thus, we have little systematic knowledge about the prevalence of blocking minorities in Council negotiations. Based on a novel dataset created by tracing the internal Council document record for all legislative proposals published between 2004 and 2025, this study identifies Council gridlock over time and across policy areas and investigates possible reasons for its occurrence through a statistical analysis. The results enable a re-evaluation of just how much conflict exists in Council decision-making and under what conditions it leads to the blocking of policy proposals. More generally, they shed further light on the decision-making capacity of the Council, and thus on the ability of the European Union as a whole, to collectively address political, societal and economic challenges.