Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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Question 301: To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if she will report on the state of the negotiations of the EU Reform Treaty as they pertain to decision making procedures relating to agriculture. [27360/07]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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The EU Reform Treaty was agreed by EU Heads of State and Government at a meeting in Lisbon on 18 and 19 October last. It will be finally adopted in December and, thereafter, it needs to be ratified by all 27 Member States.

The Reform Treaty is a carefully balanced agreement that will allow the Union to meet the challenges of the 21st century and at the same time ensure that the interests of individual Member States, both large and small, are adequately protected. The new system of double-majority voting, for example, will give proportionate weight to overall population while retaining important influence for the small and medium-sized Member States. This will be achieved by specifying that a qualified majority would require 55% of the Member States and 65% of the Union's population. This means that only those measures that genuinely command majority support can be adopted at EU level.

In so far as agriculture is concerned, the principle of qualified majority voting is already enshrined in this sector for some time. Provision is also made in the Reform Treaty for wider use of co-decision procedures in the Agriculture sector. While there will be some alterations to the thresholds for reaching a qualified majority under the new arrangements, I would point out that these alterations are unlikely to have significant implications for decision making in the agriculture sector given that it is unusual to have close voting margins in this sector.