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number of EU citizens. If a traditional ally of the two states, such as
Italy (13,25 % of the EU’s population) or the Netherlands (almost 4%)
joins the group, the final number is greater than 35% as required for
collecting the Blocking Minority. As for the condition of having “at least
four votes against the proposal,” given the political weight of France
and Germany within the Union, they can easily compose a four-member
alliance.
The picture above, in turn, shows that Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria,
Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece,
Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Sweden, Portugal, and Romania (21 members) are unable to
take any decision in the Council as the aggregate size of their population
is just 32% of the total number of EU citizens.

In order to become more familiar with the double majority
voting system and the combinations for blocking majority groupings,
interested readers may visit quite a handy and entertaining Voting
Calculator at: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-
system/voting-calculator/
It is also obvious that after Brexit of 2020 (UK citizens represented
12,90% of the total EU population), the voting power of member states
with large population, such as France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland,
have further increased.

Recently, talks about extending the double majority voting to
topics of EU foreign policy have been activated. In October 2020, the
European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, in her address
to the European Parliament, openly called on the EU member states to
support such an amendment. Despite the German and French support
for the initiative, the majority of member states seem to be against the
initiative as they are hesitant to give up the veto right and, thus, hand
over the tool for protecting their national interests.
Despite the above-mentioned skepticism towards wider
application of the Double Qualified Majority Rule, the procedure is
already used during the votes for adopting various important decisions,