Presidency of the Council
- French Presidency logo (Photo: French EU Presidency)
The Council is led by a presidency that is rotated between the EU member states every six months. The Presidency hosts the meetings of the European Council and arranges and chairs all the meetings of the Council and Council working groups. This gives the country holding the Presidency significant control over how often the Council and Council bodies meet, the items they discuss and what happens during the meetings.
Notes
- In practice, the smaller EU countries have often run the best EU presidencies because they know they cannot focus upon their own interests while they hold the role. The smaller countries normally consider the EU presidency primarily as a way of making the EU visible to their own citizens.
- An EU Presidency always uses the services of the permanent Council Secretariat.
Future
Those who advocate the abolition of rotation and the introduction of permanent EU presidencies have used the enlargement to propogate their argument. In an enlarged EU of 27 or more states, an individual country may only gain the presidency once every thirteen years. This would mean one EU presidency for every generation of politicians.
In the Convention on the Future of Europe, France and Germany proposed that the members of the European Council should appoint a President of the EU for five year terms, or else 2½ years, with the option of re-election. Denmark proposed a permanent EU Presidency which would rotate between small, medium, and large countries.
Most small EU countries rejected the concept of a permanent presidency because they think it will inevitably be carried out by someone from the large countries.
All the large countries wanted a permanent EU President to increase the EU’s visibility on the international scene and the efficiency of the Council.
The outcome of these discussions is that the Lisbon Treaty proposes creating the post of permanent President of the European Council. He shall be appointed by a superqualified majority for a renewable term of 2½ years. The presidency of the other Council formations shall be based upon equal rotation, decided on unanimously. Three countries cooperate on the presidency but each country will have the presidency of almost all councils during six months at a time.
The order of Presidency rotation until the end of 2017:
2006: Austria and Finland
2007: Germany and Portugal
2008: Slovenia and France
2009: Czech Republic and France
2010: Spain and Belgium
2011: Hungary and Poland
2012: Denmark and Cyprus
2013: Ireland and Lithuania
2014: Greece and Italy
2015: Latvia and Luxembourg
2016: The Nederlands and Slovakia
2017: Malta and the United Kingdom
Links
Presidency website in the European council http://www.consilium.europa.eu......?id=695&lang=en&mode=g
