Dropping the principle of unanimity in the decision-making process of the European Union will negatively affect the bloc's unity, European Council President Charles Michel said on Monday.
"On the very sensitive and very difficult topic of unanimity, I personally believe that completely scraping unanimity could be 'throwing the baby out with the bath water,' because unity is at the core of the EU's strength. Unity is the way to make sure decisions are uniformly implemented," Michel said.
The policy areas, where the EU principle of unanimity is required, are listed in the binding EU treaties. Such areas include the common foreign and security policy, social security, accession of new EU members and other. EU treaties have been amended several times in the past, so there is a possibility that the unanimity voting could be replaced by qualified majority voting in new editions of the documents.
In May, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the bloc should abandon the unanimity vote on foreign policy if the bloc wants to "survive."