The European Union faces a democratic deficit, within which the role of the Council of the European Union remains comparatively under-researched in the literature, despite its status as an equal co-legislator in the ordinary legislative procedure. The purpose of the thesis was to determine whether the Council causes and/or reflects the democratic deficit, to assess the fairness of the Council's existing voting system, and to propose possible improvements.
In the theoretical part, the descriptive method, synthesis, and the comparative method were used to present the EU's institutional structure, the ordinary legislative procedure, and the role of the Council, which was compared with related institutions (the US Senate, the Swiss Ständerat, the German Bundesrat). In the analytical part, the fairness of different voting systems was mathematically analysed using the Shapley–Shubik index and Monte Carlo approximation, the results were verified by comparison with existing publications, and the model's operation was simulated based on the 2024 European Parliament election results.
It was found that the Council meets the criteria for causing the democratic deficit, as it operates non-transparently and is not directly democratically accountable, while also, to a certain extent, reflecting the EU's broader structural shortcomings. It was further found that the existing qualified majority system disproportionately benefits larger member states; as a fairer alternative, a Council composed of directly elected representatives operating by simple majority is proposed.
The thesis contributes to the quantitative understanding of voting power in the Council and offers a methodological framework also applicable to the analysis of other institutions within multi-level systems. The results may serve as a starting point for discussions on EU institutional reform. The limitations of the thesis stem from the normative nature of the proposal, which does not take political feasibility into account, and from the assumption of uniform national-bloc voting by MEPs.
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