International agreements
- Latvia signing the Accession Treaty (Photo: European Commission)
The EU can enter into international agreements on trade and other topics, if it is allowed to legislate on such issues internally (within the EU). Such external agreements are decided according to the same rules as those for the internal policies. This principle is now laid down in Art. 133.6.
For example, if qualified majority voting can decide the internal policy then the international agreement can also be decided by a qualified majority.
The future
The EU Constitution proposes to make qualified majority voting the normal decision-making method for international agreements - including for part of foreign policy.Links
See Agreements with other countries.