Passed Amendment to the Partnership for Sovereignty

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Asdersland

Asdersland

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Asdersland
Senator Druing has presented this bill to the Senate, and I invite her to introduce it:

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A MOTION​

To Ratify the Amendment to the Partnership for Sovereignty
Presented to the Senate of the Union of Democratic States on the 7th of April, 2021.
Sponsored by Druing and co-sponsored by Asdersland.
As follows:
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ACKNOWLEDGING our current position as member of the Partnership for Sovereignty,

NOTING that by virtue of Section V of the treaty, any amendment of it is required to be processed by each individual member regions’ legislature before taking effect,

AWARE that the current delegations of the bloc have already mutually passed the amendment among themselves,

COMPLYING with the text of the treaty,

BE IT ENACTED by the Senate & General Assembly:

Section 1: Provisions
1. Section II, Clause 3 of the Partnership for Sovereignty shall be amended to read as follows: “After discussion, any representative may motion for a vote on a vote recommendation, such a vote will last 24 hours or until all members have voted. A vote recommendation includes the option preferred by the parties and the reasoning published for the recommendation. In order to issue a recommendation, a quorum of one-half of delegations must be reached, and three-fifths of non-abstaining representatives must support the recommendation. If the proposed vote recommendation does not reach these thresholds, the Partnership will not issue a vote recommendation on that Security Council proposal.”

2. Section IV, Clause 2 of the Partnership for Sovereignty shall be amended to read as follows: “Following discussion of the application, a 72 hour vote will be held and, if three-fourths of non-abstaining delegations concur, with a quorum of one-half of voting delegations, the region shall be admitted.”

3. A new clause shall be inserted following Section IV, Clause 2, and the subsequent clauses renumbered accordingly:

A. “Should an application vote fail to reach quorum, discussion of the application shall continue for one week, after which a second vote is held. Should the second vote fail to reach quorum, the application is automatically rejected.”
 
Thank you.

After the PfS have considered numerous applications to the bloc, we ('we' in this case, being the bloc overall. A delegation is a two-way process, so it makes sense that the Union's members of the delegation also represent the PfS, to the Union) brought up and subsequently discussed a concern regarding the voting system outlined in the treaty - In the original text, the procedure for admitting a new member can be found in Section IV, under Clause 2 and reads as follows: "Following discussion of the application, a 72 hour vote will be held and, if three-fourths of voting delegations concur, the region shall be admitted."

The specific wording of 'voting delegations' means that, for successful admission, a region requires 3/4 'For'/'Yea' votes, out of non-abstaining member regions.

The concern was that it would be easier for an applicant region to gain entry to the bloc if more member regions abstain - Meaning that diplomatically, the possibility of 'gaming' the entry to the PfS would be possible if, for example, an applicant region were to appeal to current member regions and turn potential 'Against'/'Nay' votes to 'Abstain' votes, thereby reducing the amount of member regions required to be in favour of the applicant joining the bloc for them to be granted admission. This of course, is a vulnerability.

Since, following further discussion, abstentions cannot be considered votes (In that, for example, if the clause were to specify that 3/4 delegations concurring out of all member regions would be required, that would functionally make an abstention an 'against'/'nay' vote, which defeats the point of an abstention), we determined that the solution to this issue is to implement a quorum system. We also decided to apply this system not just to admission of member regions to the bloc, but also to issuing voting recommendations, as the same issue appeared to be present for that system in the original text, as well.

Under the proposed quorums system outlined by the amendment, for issuing voting recommendations, 1/2 of delegations must vote and 3/5 of the delegations that vote, must support a recommendation, in order to pass it. For admitting members to the bloc, 1/2 of delegations must vote and 3/5 of the delegations that vote, must be in favour of the admitting the member to the bloc. While a vote recommendation that does not pass both thresholds will make the PfS default to not issuing a recommendation on the current SC proposal, the procedure for admitting a member is a bit more lenient and somewhat expanded - Failing to reach quorum will trigger an extension on discussion before another vote, then a second failure to reach quorum will mean automatic rejection of the member region's application. We believe that by implementing these changes to the treaty, not only will the PfS be more internally secure and less weaponisable, but also far more resistant to being 'gamed' diplomatically when it comes to entering the bloc.

Section V of the treaty outlines its amendment process. Prior to this being brought to the floor, it was discussed and voted in within the bloc itself, by delegations from each member region and subsequently, unanimously supported. As per the Charter, an amendment to it will only take effect following the relevant treaty amendment process in each member region - Which is the current stage of the amendment.

I should also note that the amendment as it appears here, is formatted bespoke for our legislature; That is to say, each member region will have their own method of treaty amendment; Some may not even have a legislature to process it, so by that virtue, there was no and could never be a, universal formatting or presentation that this could be packaged into to just put in front of you to appropriately approve or reject. When discussing the changes, we simply discussed what should be changed, how and what that would look like in the relevant sections of the amended Charter. Essentially, the amendment as written here, simply formalises the changes to the Charter, into our region's standard legal format for an amendment, which is why it looks like any other amendment to a Union Law that you may have previously seen. Please let me know if you see any issues. Also I would be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the PfS or this amendment, provided that no confidential information is requested or would be required to answer said question.
 
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Thank you Senator. With that I'd just like to add as WA Delegate I believe it imperative to pass this as soon as practicable. While I believe it may be possible that this is not in the appropriate format (see the Aurora Covenant, among various treaties previously passed by the Union)--it may need an enacting clause and section--this could easily be added through amendments to the bill and thus I have given it my full support.

And with that I open the floor to debate and amendment.
 
I do understand Asdersland's concern about the bill formatting being atypical from past treaties; It's worth noting that, to my knowledge, this is the first interregional agreement of this nature to ever be brought to the legislature.

Speaking from my wealth of experience in the region's Foreign Affairs Ministry, up until now, every treaty has been processed as a singular, unilateral and not-abstract body of text (i.e. the text presented is the document resulting from the negotations verbatim, typically packaged within something formalising it within the legal system), that was negotiated prior to being brought to either/all region's legislatures (or other form of treaty ratification process where applicable).

This is extremely unlike past ratifications - Even though it's still an interregional agreement and therefore, is being treated as such in our legislature (hence it being a motion to ratify), it's an interregional agreement to amend an interregional agreement that started in a completely abstract form - That being specified changes, to an existing document. We were bound to have such a thing at some point as we already signatory to treaties which specify an amendment process, but it's somewhat uncharted territory for us, because... It's an interregional agreement, therefore we ratify it. But it's an amendment by nature.

It's a strange position for us. Prior to initiating these procedures, I did consult a certain senior legal expert in the region about this for some sage legal advice and they effectively couldn't give me any, since interregional law takes precedence over regional law and they work off of different formatting. But again, this is an abstract agreement. We can't simply agree to this without formalising it (without changing the actual content of the agreement) for our legislature, first.
 
I would suggest looking at this from the perspective of a treaty ratification, not an amendment. For simplicities sake, it would be quite possible to simply ratify the treaty again, as amended.
 
Glaciosia said:
I would suggest looking at this from the perspective of a treaty ratification, not an amendment. For simplicities sake, it would be quite possible to simply ratify the treaty again, as amended.
Click to expand...
It is a treaty ratification. We are ratifying an interregional agreement between the Union and a third party. It just so happens that said interregional agreement is just changes.
 
I propose that the preamble's clauses beginning with "Complying" and "Be it enacted" be struck and replaced by the following, single clause:

HEREBY, the following amendments to the Partnership for Sovereignty Charter are ratified:
Click to expand...

I further propose that Section 1 be renamed to "Amendments to the Charter".

This should suffice to clarify the situation.
 
The motion to close debate is acknowledged and shall be voted on. I apologize to Druing as it appears our motions were simultaneous.

I vote aye on the motion to close debate.
 
With a majority in favor, we move now to the vote on amendments. Senators, please state your vote for each of the following amendments proposed:

(1) That the preamble's clauses beginning with "Complying" and "Be it enacted" be struck and replaced by the following, single clause:
HEREBY, the following amendments to the Partnership for Sovereignty Charter are ratified:
Click to expand...
(2) That Section 1 be renamed to "Amendments to the Charter".
 
With a majority in favor, the amendments are adopted. The text of the motion now reads as follows:

​

Coat_of_Arms_UDS.png

​

A MOTION​

To Ratify the Amendment to the Partnership for Sovereignty
Presented to the Senate of the Union of Democratic States on the 7th of April, 2021.
Sponsored by Druing and co-sponsored by Asdersland.
As follows:
​

ACKNOWLEDGING our current position as member of the Partnership for Sovereignty,

NOTING that by virtue of Section V of the treaty, any amendment of it is required to be processed by each individual member regions’ legislature before taking effect,

AWARE that the current delegations of the bloc have already mutually passed the amendment among themselves,

HEREBY, the following amendments to the Partnership for Sovereignty Charter are ratified:

Section 1: Amendments to the Charter
1. Section II, Clause 3 of the Partnership for Sovereignty shall be amended to read as follows: “After discussion, any representative may motion for a vote on a vote recommendation, such a vote will last 24 hours or until all members have voted. A vote recommendation includes the option preferred by the parties and the reasoning published for the recommendation. In order to issue a recommendation, a quorum of one-half of delegations must be reached, and three-fifths of non-abstaining representatives must support the recommendation. If the proposed vote recommendation does not reach these thresholds, the Partnership will not issue a vote recommendation on that Security Council proposal.”

2. Section IV, Clause 2 of the Partnership for Sovereignty shall be amended to read as follows: “Following discussion of the application, a 72 hour vote will be held and, if three-fourths of non-abstaining delegations concur, with a quorum of one-half of voting delegations, the region shall be admitted.”

3. A new clause shall be inserted following Section IV, Clause 2, and the subsequent clauses renumbered accordingly:

A. “Should an application vote fail to reach quorum, discussion of the application shall continue for one week, after which a second vote is held. Should the second vote fail to reach quorum, the application is automatically rejected.”
Senators, I now open the final vote on this motion.
 
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