You said that 168 was the threshold for a qualified majority.

If the threshold required for a majority decision is too high, the Union will no longer be able to make decisions about fighting terrorism, economic governance or anything else, because a small group of countries will be able to block any proposal.

On the one hand, it is advisable to make the distinction between the Treaty of Nice and the Protocol on the enlargement of the European Union, which will be applied when the Treaty of Nice has been ratified, whatever the pace at which countries join, and on the other hand, Declaration Nos 20 and 21 (the Declaration on the enlargement of the European Union and the Declaration on the qualified majority threshold and the number of votes for a blocking minority in an enlarged Union) which constitute the basic components to which the common position to be adopted by the current Member States on this issue during accession ...[+++] negotiations shall conform.

Despite a slight increase in the threshold for qualified majority voting, the scope of which remains to be seen, this extension is bound to mean that the gap will increase further still between the European institutions and national democracies.

At this juncture, we must pay particular tribute to the Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, who fought to the very end for a more equitable presence for the candidate countries and to set the qualified majority threshold at a less unreasonable level – although one that is still too high.

Thus, as anticipated in the Protocol on enlargement and the Declarations annexed to the Treaty, the allocation of Parliamentary seats and Council votes to the new Member States and the qualified majority threshold applicable in the future were determined legally in their accession treaties.