
Article 1 
The Rules of Procedure of the Council of 22 March 2004 (2004/338/EC, Euratom) are hereby amended as follows:

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.. after Annex II the following Annex shall be inserted:

ANNEX IIa 
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.
Article 2 
This Decision shall take effect on the day of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.
It shall apply from 1 November 2004.
Done at Luxembourg, 11 October 2004.
For the Council
The President
B. R. BOT