Abstract
The main argument of this thesis is that positions on single issues explain only a proportion of the actual voting behaviour in the Council of Ministers. By employing a simple spatial model the thesis tests whether the Council members vote in line with their positions on single-issues or not. The findings reveal that the model manage to predict (by using the positions as predictions) a large amount of the actual “yes” votes, but performs more poorly when predicting the extent of the actual opposition recorded on each proposal. Even so the model manages to detect some of the disagreement showed by the Council members at the final stage of decision-making.