Article 1

The Rules of Procedure of the Council of 22 March 2004 (2004/338/EC, Euratom)^f1 are hereby amended as follows:

1. 1..

   in Article 11 the following paragraph shall be added:

   ‘5.

   When a decision is to be adopted by the Council by a qualified majority, and if a member of the Council so requests, it shall be verified that the Member States constituting the qualified majority represent at least 62 % of the total population of the Union calculated according to the population figures set out in Article 1 of Annex IIa.’;

2. 2..

   after Annex II the following Annex shall be inserted:

   ANNEX IIa

   DETAILED RULES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE PROVISIONS CONCERNING THE WEIGHTING OF VOTES IN THE COUNCIL

   Article 1

   For the purposes of implementing Article 205(4) of the Treaty establishing the European Community, Article 118(4) of the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, the third subparagraph of Article 23(2) and Article 34(3) of the Treaty on European Union, the total population of each Member State for the period from 1 November 2004 to 31 December 2005 shall be as follows:

   Member State	Population(× 1 000)
   Germany	82 531,7
   France	61 684,7
   United Kingdom	59 651,5
   Italy	57 888,2
   Spain	42 345,3
   Poland	38 190,6
   Netherlands	16 258,0
   Greece	11 041,1
   Portugal	10 474,7
   Belgium	10 396,4
   Czech Republic	10 211,5
   Hungary	10 116,7
   Sweden	8 975,7
   Austria	8 114,0
   Denmark	5 397,6
   Slovakia	5 380,1
   Finland	5 219,7
   Ireland	4 027,5
   Lithuania	3 445,9
   Latvia	2 319,2
   Slovenia	1 996,4
   Estonia	1 350,6
   Cyprus	730,4
   Luxembourg	451,6
   Malta	399,9
   Total	458 599,0
   Threshold (62 %)	284 331,4

   Article 2

   1.

   Before 1 September each year, Member States shall communicate to the Statistical Office of the European Communities the data concerning their total population as at 1 January of the current year.

   2.

   With effect from 1 January each year, the Council shall, in accordance with the data available to the Statistical Office of the European Communities on 30 September of the preceding year, amend the figures set out in Article 1. This Decision shall be published in the Official Journal of the European Union.