Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many times the procedure provided for in Council Decision 2009/857/EC on the implementation of Article 16(4) of the Treaty on European Union has been invoked in each of the years since that Decision entered force; 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 purpose of Council Decision 2009/857/EC on the implementation of Article 16(4) of the Treaty on European Union is to allow Member States that are close to but do not constitute a blocking minority to request that the Council defer adoption of a measure for a period of time to allow for further discussions with a view to resolving the concerns that they have raised. It came into effect with the introduction of the changed system of calculating a Qualified Majority on 1 November 2014. Although the Government does not keep data on this provision, to the best of our knowledge it has not been invoked.