Qualified Majority Voting

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Identification
Qualified Majority Voting
Who votes
Members of the Council of the European Union take its decisions by voting.
Vote weighting
Each country can cast a certain number of votes, roughly in proportion to the size of its population. The number of votes per country is as follows:

Country Votes
France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom 29
Poland and Spain 27
Romania 14
Netherlands 13
Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary and Portugal 12
Austria, Bulgaria and Sweden 10
Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania and Slovakia 7
Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg and Slovenia 4
Malta 3
TOTAL............................. 345

Qualified majority
A qualified majority is reached:

if a majority of member states (in some cased a two-thirds majority) approve;
if a minimum of 255 votes is cast in favour – which is 73.9% of the total.

In addition, a member state may ask for confirmation that the votes in favour represent at least 62% of the total population of the Union. If this is found not to be the case, the decision will not be adopted.