Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 3 July 2015 to Question 4126, how many times the procedure provided for in the Council Decision of 29 March 1994 have been invoked; what the concerns of the member states that invoked the procedure were in each such case; and how those concerns were met in the final decision taken in each such case.

The Council Decision of 29 March 1994, also known as the Ioannina Compromise, was superseded by the Treaty of Nice, and subsequently by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. From 2014, a new version of the Ioannina Compromise took effect. This allows a group of Member States short of a blocking minority to request a deferral of decisions they do not agree with, within a reasonable timeframe. The Government does not maintain a central record of when the provision has been invoked or for what reason.