Council Bibliographies: European Council

Using the example of Werner Faymann, Dalia Grybauskaité, Angela Merkel, Viktor Orbán and Mark Rutte, the book examines the impact that the European Council's environment has on leadership styles and the impact of leaders on the institution's decision-making during the financial and debt crisis, the Ukraine crisis, and the migration crisis (2010-2016). It presents domestic factors affecting the choice of leadership style nationally, finding cooperative styles are best suited to the European Council, as its structure relies on negotiated consensus. The European Council's environment has three effects on leadership styles and decision-making: socialisation towards cooperation, compromise making, and Europeanisation. The book provides an in-depth insight into how leaders behave among their peers behind closed doors.

Le Conseil européen est à n’en pas douter l’institution suprême de l’Union. Issu du communiqué final du Sommet européen de Paris (9 et 10 décembre 1974), cette instance n’a cessé d’imprimer sa marque au processus d’« une union sans cesse plus étroite entre les peuples européens ». Cet ouvrage a non seulement pour ambition d’identifier la dernière-née des institutions politiques de l’Union, mais aussi de dresser le panorama de ses actions dans les espaces de l’Union et d’analyser ses réactions en temps de crises. Ainsi se confirme l’un des fondements de l’Union, où rien ne se fait sans la communauté des États membres, mais bien avec.

Ce manuel comporte l'étude du droit institutionnel de l'Union européenne tel qu'il se présente 5 ans après l'entrée en vigueur du traité de Lisbonne. L'ensemble des dispositions relatives à l'Union, à ses institutions, au processus décisionnel, à l'ordre juridique ainsi qu'au contrôle politique et juridictionnel sont traitées de manière complète.
Voir en particulier : Chapitre 2, Le Conseil européen

The book analyzes the EU's response to the COVID-19 crisis, focusing on the European Council's leadership role and the innovative recovery package. It highlights the remarkable impetus for political consensus among national leaders and notes challenges related to their detailed and ambiguous decisions.

In this book, Jan Werts examines the history of the European Council, focusing on key crises such as the Greek debt, migration, Brexit, and Covid. Drawing on interviews with EU insiders, Werts provides an extraordinary account of how leaders navigated these challenges, that often threatened the European project itself. He also explores the institutional development of the European Council since 2009, highlighting its pivotal role in driving EU integration with the legitimacy conferred by national leaders.

Heads of state or government of the member states of the European Union have a dual role: they are and remain holders of domestic executive offices, but at the same time members of the European Council. This membership, approached here from a constitutional and historical perspective, is autonomous to the extent that it is attributed to the heads of state or government and substantively determined by the EU's constitution. The present study analyses the force of the duality that membership entails

This systematic assessment of the -often opaque- European Council looks at its characteristics, leaders and output as well as its impact on EU supranational and intergovernmental dynamics. Taking account of historical and contemporary developments up to and beyond the Lisbon Treaty, it encourages in-depth understanding of this key institution.

Since 1974, the European Council transformed from an informal gathering to a central EU institution, wielding supreme political authority and shaping Union strategy. This book recounts its evolution, detailing landmark summits, capturing atmosphere, tensions, and long-term impacts. Authored by senior EU civil servants intimately involved in Council affairs, it offers fresh insights and perspectives, highlighting key moments in Europe's history.

This book delves into European Council and Council decision-making spanning two decades post-Lisbon Treaty. It examines key bodies such as the European Council, Eurogroup, and various Council configurations, highlighting their role in the new intergovernmentalism of EU governance. Puetter reveals an integration paradox: member states support integration outside the community method, notably in economic governance and foreign policy. Using the framework of 'deliberative intergovernmentalism', it tracks institutional evolution post-Maastricht Treaty, emphasizing non-legislative decision-making and member state involvement throughout the policy process.

This book explores power dynamics in the post-Lisbon EU, focusing on the European Council. It argues that the EU operates certain hierarchies and mechanisms evident in summit proceedings. Contributors examine cooperation, rivalry, and opposition within council and rotating presidencies, blending analyses of events, processes, political structures, and actor trajectories. The book probes how the founding compromise of European integration between sovereignty and supranationality evolves within this new political model, aiming to balance cooperation and integration.

The book explores the relationship between the European Council and the other EU institutions and the various roles of the European Council in the EU decision-making process. It shows that European Council conclusions have been used extensively in this decision-making process, and this has increased considerably over time. Based on the analysis of European Council conclusions and legal texts, a typology is created to provide an orderly picture of the European Council's various roles, such as the European Council as a political initiator, as an interpreter of the Treaties, and as an appeals council.

This work examines the evolution of European decision-making from the Paris Summit (1957) to recent European Council meetings, with a focus on changes catalyzed by the Single European Act. Drawing from diverse sources and personal journalistic experience, Werts offers fresh insights, including the legal status of Council communiques and decisions. Topics covered include the Council's origins, organizational rules, functioning, legal nature, meeting outcomes, decision-making progress, and future prospects.

The Spitzenkandidaten process initiated by the European Parliament for the 2014 European Parliament elections was bound to challenge the European Council’s electoral function. This analysis will consider the European Council’s role in electing the Commission President in the past and particularly since 2014. We argue that there is a path dependency in the procedure by which national leaders want to have a decisive say. Yet to explain the European Council’s role we need to put it in a broader context and widen the scope to focus on its electoral function in general and take into account the other top positions for which this key institution performs this function: the members always agree on their proposals in package deals linking the nomination of the President of the European Commission with those of the President of the European Council as well as the High Representative and, in 2019, also of the President of the European Central Bank.

Regulation 2020/2092 on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the Union budget was put forward by the Commission in 2018 in a context of heightened dissensus over rule of law concerns. Applauded by the EP, the proposal strongly divided member states in the Council. The regulation was only adopted after two disputed compromises were reached by the European Council in July and December 2020. It had been shaped by increased contestation and ended in a very disputed consensus. The chapter shows that EU institutional actors held different views on how to frame this Regulation, divided over the core rule of law dimensions: legality, control, consent, and substance. Ultimately, in terms of power, the outcome was largely determined by the powerful role of the European Council.

The relations between the European Parliament and the European Council have turned into a significant issue for the legitimacy and balance of powers in the Union’s institutional architecture. Building on previous theoretical models and throughout the analysis of key events, in particular the COVID-19 crisis and the negotiations around the MFF and Recovery Fund, the chapter sets out to assess the relationship between these two institutions between 2019 and the first half of 2021.

Single in name, dual in policymaking method, multiple in nature - this is the Union's institutional framework in a nutshell. An overarching 'single institutional framework' exists on paper, but in practice, the powers and responsibilities of the EU's foreign policy actors are determined through different policymaking methods (see Chapter 1). Painting the actors and procedures in broad strokes is quite easy. In CFSP/CSDP, the Council, under the strategic leadership of the European Council, dominates all stages of policymaking, supported by the High Representative and the European External Action Service (EEAS).

The Council is a central player in EU decision making. There are different Council formations (made up of ministers responsible for particular policy areas), one of which is the Environment Council. The member governments' top political leaders meet in a different forum - the European Council - which now plays an important role in EU climate change policy in particular.

In crisis times, the natural reflex is to turn to the executive for strong and urgent measures, and at the EU level, the closest we have to some form of collective government is the European Council (EUCO). We will briefly recall the history of this rather peculiar body and its key role in crisis management, starting with the counter-terrorism strategy. We will then broaden our analysis to focus on the post Lisbon Treaty period and the multiple crises it has held for the EU. The COVID-19 crisis is the latest and most extraordinary of these crises. It is because of these crises and because of the tectonic changes in geopolitics over the past years that the EU is slowly waking up to the need to reinforce its strategic autonomy in a range of areas, as clearly reflected in the Strategic Agenda adopted by the EUCO in June 2019

The Council of the European Union (hereinafter ‘the Council’) and the European Council are hybrid institutions. On the one hand, they comprise representatives of Member States, on which they rely for appointment, definition of their mandate and dismissal of their components, therefore embodying the intergovernmental dimension of the EU constitutional structure. On the other hand, they act as supranational institutions endowed with collective prerogatives in the EU decision-making process. From a structural point of view, having regard to their composition, the two not only entitled of the EU. After institutions share similar intergovernmental features. Moreover, they are both considered part of the fragmented EU executive. However from a functional point of view, their role in the EU decision-making process is not fully comparable...

"At the moment the European Council is the biggest obstacle to having real European democracy. Parliamentary democracy to be precise. "

This chapter focuses on the European Council (EC) and the extent to which it takes on governmental and other functions in the European Union (EU) system. The basis for analysis in this case is the EC’s rules of procedure. At first sight, the EC’s working routine is one of a negotiating assembly between constituency delegates within a strict mandate. However, there are also instances where the EC acts as a second parliamentary chamber, a federal presidency or an EU government. This makes the EC appear as the most ambiguous institution in the EU. The analysis aims at taking a detailed look at the presence, role and weight of these opposed political ideal types in the rules of procedure—and thus of the foci of potential conflicts

The European Council embodies the new intergovernmentalism as no other decision-making body. Summits of European Union heads of state or government have traditionally focused on providing long-term political guidance and brokering compromises over institutional questions. Since 1992, the European Council has assumed a key coordinating role in the most sensitive of the Union’s new policy areas: economic governance, foreign policy, and justice and home affairs. It has also emerged as the crisis manager in chief through ad-hoc summits focusing on pressing political problems. European Council meetings are geared towards policy deliberation among the Union’s most senior decision-makers. Drawing on data on European Council agendas over the last two decades, this chapter explores how crisis management and new areas of EU activity have come to dominate meetings of EU heads of state or government since 1992 and how this determines the character and focus of European integration during this period.

Europe’s relationships with the world are being reforged at a pace the EU clearly struggles to keep up with. Economic statecraft, and perhaps even economic warfare, will be important features of this new world order, whether Europeans like it or not. In this new age of geoeconomics, the EU not only needs to develop a foreign economic policy, it also needs to adapt its governance structure to the fact that the communitarian core of EU policymaking – market regulation, commerce, technology and climate – is impossible to disentangle from statecraft and security interests. As the EU’s legal-economic heart has an ever-greater impact on Europe’s security, the Union’s taking a bigger strategic role is simply inevitable. Unless the decision is made to strip the Union of its core economic, market and regulatory competences, there are really only two options from which to pick. Either we agree to live with crucial strategic decisions being made by increasingly powerful Brussels officials operating in a political vacuum, that is to say, largely invisibly, unaccountably, and beyond the purview of the EU’s member states, parliaments and the public. Or we insist those strategic trade-offs are driven to the surface inside a new governance layout, where they can be analysed, debated and judged by European officials and politicians despatched by voters to do precisely that.

We know that the European Council is a powerful and visible strategic agenda-setter, crisis manager, and impasse-breaker. Yet we are less familiar with the role of national heads of state or government in everyday law-making. By analysing all legislation under the ordinary legislative procedure since 1999, this CEPS Explainer asks whether and – if so –how and how often the European Council refers to these specific laws in its summit conclusions. We show that the European Council mentions about 20% of all legislation and especially prioritises laws that redistribute money, expand EU competences and respond to a specific crisis.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Council has again moved enlargement high on the agenda of the European Union (EU). From an academic perspective, this raises several interesting issues: first, about the motivations to start enlargement negotiations; second, about the realization of enlargement and the link between Union widening and deepening; and third, about similarities and differences compared to previous enlargement rounds. This article analyzes why and how the European Council, the actor de facto in charge of opening and concluding accession negotiations, addressed the enlargement topic over time.

On 1 December 2024, former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa will take over as President of the European Council. This briefing provides an overview of the functions and responsibilities of this office by answering some of the most frequently asked questions in relation to the President of the European Council. It also looks at the mandates of the previous office-holders and the President's interaction with the European Parliament.

Le Conseil européen s’est « autocréé » en 1974 parce qu’il y avait un besoin d’impliquer plus directement les chefs d’État ou de gouvernement dans les affaires européennes. Depuis lors, il a joué un rôle central dans l’intégration européenne. Son fonctionnement lui permet une grande flexibilité dans la gestion des dossiers relevant tant du niveau européen que du niveau national. En temps de crise, c’est vers cette institution que se tournent les regards car elle assure une forme de gouvernance collective européenne. Depuis 2008, l’Union européenne a été confrontée à une série de crises très graves ; en les gérant, sous la direction du Conseil européen, elle est devenue plus intégrée et plus capable d’agir. Il faudra bâtir sur cet acquis pour surmonter les défis croissants du monde moderne, à travers la recherche d’une plus grande autonomie stratégique.

This article analyses Charles Michel's performance as president of the European Council in light of the demands of his office: to provide leadership in brokering consensus amongst member states and advancing European integration. Drawing on leadership theory, we question whether he succeeded in prudently using and perhaps expanding the institutional resources of his office, seizing the opportunities of an extremely challenging situational context and enhancing his leadership performance in the complex institutional setting of the EU. We conclude that Charles Michel's leadership was fairly effective in his role as a broker and less so as a promoter of European integration, whilst his personal disposition, strong political ambitions and eagerness for public visibility often thwarted successes.

"The European Council brings together the Heads of State or Government of the 27 EU Member States in regular 'summit' meetings which seek to define the overall political direction and priorities of the European Union. This Briefing offers a selection of key facts and figures about this institution, detailing its membership, role, work and developent over time

The article tests the theory of the new intergovernmentalism on environmental policy of the EU with the main objective of applying the alternative approach to European integration beyond its traditional policy focus. The research question is whether the quantity and quality of the engagement of the European Council (EUCO) in environmental policy has increased in the post-Maastricht period examining the EUCO Conclusions from 1993 to 2023 through the qualitative theme content analysis combining deductive and inductive coding and the holistic grading method. The findings did not confirm that the EUCO is a pivotal actor in the further integration of environmental policy.

This article tackles the question of what happens when the EUCO-centred crisis management system is deployed in a post-crisis environment. It uses the theoretical framework of New Institutional Leadership (NIL) – which explains how the EUCO-centred mode of policy-making works during crisis reform negotiations – to compare and contrast the post-crisis case of the EU’s response to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Based on an empirical tracing of the causal dynamics of the process, we find that without the speed and urgency of a crisis, the EUCO system’s ability to steer major policy developments is more limited.
Note on interviews: This article is based on regular interviews and informal background conversations with key insiders from the PEC Cabinet, General Secretariat of the Council and European Commission (President Cabinet, Secretariat General) from December 2022 to February 2024.

This article analyses how the European Council and the institutional infrastructure that supports it have been managing the early stages of the energy crisis. It makes a methodological and empirical contribution to the debate on how the European Council system manages (poly)crises. Empirically, it offers a process-management analysis of the first nine months of the energy crisis and it delineates the roles of various actors and institutions: the president of the European Council, the Council Secretariat, the Commission president, and the Commission Services. The authors unpack the crucial ingredients of polycrisis management: how to get and keep an issue on the agenda, how to shape and steer European-Council-level debates and conclusions, and how to ensure a proper follow-up by the Commission and the Council.

The 2020 COVID pandemic has posed an unprecedented challenge to Europe’s economies, societies and political institutions. Finding solutions for the immediate and longer-term impact of the pandemic requires collaboration between the European Union’s (EU) member states and leadership from their governments at both national and European levels. The President of the European Council is central to this process, as he leads and facilitates the collaboration between the heads of states and governments. Looking back at the lessons from Donald Tusk’s time as President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019, this article argues that Tusk made an immensely important political contribution to the EU as he set the tone for a liberal and progressive agenda at a time of significant threat from populist and pro-Russian voices in Europe. The article argues that the role of the European Council President today requires strong brokering skills and leadership behind the scenes more than an openly political and public figure.

This special issue follows up on a stream of recent contributions on what has been identified as a particular phase of post-Maastricht European integration: the ‘new intergovernmentalism’ and ‘the intergovernmental union’. This literature considers the European Union’s (EU) core intergovernmental forums for policy coordination, the European Council, the Eurogroup and the Foreign Affairs Council as central to EU decision-making. These bodies perform functions related to policy initiation and implementation which were traditionally associated with the European Commission. Intergovernmentalisation is primarily detectable in new areas of EU activity such as economic governance and foreign affairs which operate mainly outside the community method and in policy sectors which depict a mix of legislative and non-legislative decision-making mechanisms, such as justice and home affairs and energy. More integration is achieved without significant further supranationalisation. These developments affect how the Union’s main decision bodies operate and how interinstitutional relations are structured.

This article reviews the European Council's CFSP performance since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. The yardstick used in this assessment is the degree to which the European Council has managed to foster a common approach to the international foreign and security problems confronting the European Union. While the European Council has, in the past, been reasonably successful in shaping and establishing the basic structures for the CFSP and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), analysis shows that its intergovernmental nature and the sporadic character of its meetings make it entirely unsuited for the role of CFSP 'executive' in crisis moments. Through its institutional shortcomings as crisis manager, the European Council is itself a contributing factor fostering twenty-seven unilateral or sub-EU initiatives by Member States with a greater diplomatic tradition and capacity. It is therefore suggested that the European Council should come to a more effective division of labour with the Foreign Affairs Council whereby the Heads of State or Government focus on their longer-term structural and strategic tasks rather than on CFSP crisis management

The European Union's (EU's) responses to the economic and financial crisis provided a vigorous illustration for how the role of the Union's core intergovernmental bodies – the European Council and the Council – has evolved in recent years. The European Council has emerged as the centre of political gravity in the field of economic governance. The Council and the Eurogroup fulfil a crucial role as forums for policy debate. The emphasis on increased high-level intergovernmental policy co-ordination is the reflection of an integration paradox inherent to the post-Maastricht EU. While policy interdependencies have grown, member state governments have resisted the further transfer of formal competences to the EU level and did not follow the model of the Community method. Instead, they aim for greater policy coherence through intensified intergovernmental co-ordination. Given its consensus dependency, this co-ordination system can best be conceptualized as deliberative intergovernmentalism.

Since its creation in 1974 the European Council has turned into the key institution in the institutional architecture of the EU polity. The Maastricht Treaty on the European Union was a history-making product of this body of heads of state or government. For the institutional evolution of the European Council itself the Maastricht Treaty confirmed and reinforced trends starting with the Hague summit in 1969. This article covers the pre-history of the European Council as well as the road from the birth of the European Council in Paris, 1974, to the Maastricht Treaty and the next steps via two treaty revisions and the constitutional convention to the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. This article will not only try to satisfy some historical curiosity, but point out fundamental factors, explaining why Union executive leaders have invested time and energy in the labour-intensive and partly frustrating exercise of the making and working of their club: this key institution helped them to emerge as powerful multi-level players in a multi-institutional architecture

What grants influence in the European Council? Drawing on general theories of negotiation, this article isolates and illustrates three complementary sources of bargaining power in the European Council: state sources of power, institutional sources of power and individual sources of power. It reports the results of a unique series of elite interviews with European heads of state and government, foreign ministers and top-level civil servants. Elite testimonies suggest that the state dimension of power is the most fundamental, whereas the institutional and individual dimensions of power play a secondary role and mainly mediate the impact of structural power asymmetries.

En préambule à cette étude, Jacques Delors constate le peu d'attention accordée au Conseil européen malgré son rôle central, remerciant les auteurs de combler une partie de cette lacune par une analyse pragmatique et claire du fonctionnement du Conseil. Delors souligne le paradoxe selon lequel cet organe, initialement redouté pour son caractère intergouvernemental, est devenu un moteur important de l'intégration européenne. Il insiste sur la nécessité de réformer le fonctionnement du Conseil, en soulignant les propositions d'Helen Wallace et de Philippe de Schoutheete à cet égard.

In this article, published in 1988, Wolfgang Wessels, Director of the Institut für Europäische Politik in Bonn and Head of the Department of Political and Administrative Studies at the College of Europe in Bruges, analyses the development of the role and activities of the European Council 12 years after its creation in 1974 and considers the consequences of its establishment for the institutional balance of the Community.