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Voting in the Council is done according to the ‘double majority’ rule: For a proposal to pass, approval by 55% of the member states is required, which at the same time must represent 65% of the population of the EU. If a country leaves the Union, the share of any other country both with respect to the number of states and with respect to the number of citizens will increase. Thus, it would seem evident that the relative influence of a member state in the Council would increase after another member state leaves. Similarly, if a new country joins the Union, then all the other member states should lose power as a result of transferring a part of their power to the new member.
Remarkably, this is not true in general nor is it the case for the Brexit in particular. As we shall see, the smaller countries will lose power after the UK’s leaves the EU. Moreover, if Scotland should join the EU after Brexit occurs, the larger states will gain power through Scotland’s accession. We regard both effects as rather counter-intuitive. [...]
It is a striking result that the larger states win in power considerably, while the smaller states lose power – running counter to intuition. In relative terms the strongest winner is Poland with almost a 29% gain. All states with a population of less than 4.5 million lose in power, with Ireland neither winning nor losing.
If Scotland joins the EU (of 27 members) the gain/loss balance is inverted. This time the bigger states would lose power (as one would expect), but all states with less than 10 million citizens would gain power, running counter to a naïve guess. This time Belgium is in the ‘neutral’ position.