Glancing over an old Economist I caught wind of something that mentioned voting in the European Union is scaled so that “larger” countries have more votes.
What is the standard for size-- eocnomic prosperity, population, land mass?
As well, what was the motivation behind this? Europe seems to tend to lean towards (gee, enough propositions there?) a much more equal voting scheme, what with proportional representation for parliments and such. The US’s electoral college frequently comes under attack, so what was the motivation behind this decision?
What the Economist was presumably referring to was the system of qualified majority voting used by the Council of the European Union. This only applies for certain types of business. The link posted above by Tamealien gives the full details.
Note however that the Council is just one element within the structure of the European Union. The allocation of seats in the European Parliament is roughly based on population, while the larger states are also entitled to an extra seat on the European Commission. In theory, this respects the sovereignty of each member state while preventing the smaller states ganging up on the larger ones. In practice, the system is the product of fifty years of political compromises designed to keep everyone happy. Sounds familiar? As with the US constitution, the justification rests not on the fairness of any one element within the system but rather on the balance between them.
There is not one standard criterium to determine a country’s weight. The number of votes a country gets in the European Parliament or the Commission is fixed; in the Commissin, every country has one commissioner except for the five big ones (UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany) which have two commissioners each. In the Parliament, the number of seats each nation was assigned is fixed too. If major changes should take places, the new balance will have to be negotiated about. Apparently, the main aspects were population and economy, not land mass, since Germany has more seats in the EP than France or Spain with their more extensive land masses.
There is no regulation that automatically adjusts the influence of each country according to any parameter.