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This article was downloaded by: [Eindhoven Technical University]On: 23 November 2014, At: 03:57Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Change and Stability of theEU Institutional System: theCommunitarization of the CouncilPresidencyAna Mar Fernández aa Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris , Paris, FrancePublished online: 05 Nov 2008.
To cite this article: Ana Mar Fernández (2008) Change and Stability of the EU Institutional System:the Communitarization of the Council Presidency, Journal of European Integration, 30:5, 617-634,DOI: 10.1080/07036330802439590
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European IntegrationVol. 30, No. 5, 617–634, December 2008
ISSN 0703–6337 Print/ISSN 1477–2280 Online/08/050617-18 © 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/07036330802439590
ARTICLE
Change and Stability of the EU Institutional System:
the Communitarization of theCouncil Presidency
ANA MAR FERNÁNDEZ
Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, Paris, FranceTaylor and FrancisGEUI_A_344127.sgm10.1080/07036330802439590Journal of European Integration0703-6337 (print)/1477-2280 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis305000000December 2008AnaMar [email protected]
ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to demonstrate the usefulness of taking intoaccount the variable of EU institutional development when analysing the dilemma of theCouncil Presidency in terms of role conception. Using a historical institutionalistperspective, the article examines the path of the EU Council Presidency since its originsand argues that five decades of institutional feedback have altered its nature. Originallyconceived as an intergovernmental function, today the Presidency is identified increas-ingly with the defence of Community interests. This process of institutional conversionhas essentially limited the scope of action of the member states.
KEY WORDS: EU Council, EU Council Presidency, historical institutionalism, EU institutional development, path dependence, role conception
Introduction
Since the 1970s, there has been a recurring debate in the literature concerningthe dilemma of the EU Council Presidency in terms of role conception. Whilepart of the literature considers the holding of the Presidency to be a suprana-tional responsibility that involves subordinating the pursuit of nationalinterests to that of common interest, another part of the literature maintainsthat it is an intergovernmental role allowing the maximization of nationalinterests. In contrast to these two polarized visions that highlight respectivelythe constraining or maximizing character of the Presidency, a third line of
Correspondence Address: Ana Mar Fernández, Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris(Centre d’Etudes Européennes), 117 Boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris, France.Email: [email protected]
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interpretation has emerged. This vision nuances the previous views andaffirms that the presidential role combines both communitarian and inter-governmental dimensions.
The aim of this article is to contribute to the study of this question bytaking into account a variable that has received little scholarly attention untilnow: the changing nature of the Presidency over time. The starting hypothe-sis lies in the claim that the institutional evolution of the Presidency shouldbe taken into account when analysing the competing or complementary rolesunderlying its exercise. Before researching the scope of the Presidency for themember states in terms of responsibility and/or opportunity, this articleargues that it would be useful to pay more attention to the relative positionoccupied by this institution within the overall EU system and to consider thefact that this rank has varied throughout the years.
The article is divided into two parts. The first provides a review of themain theses put forward concerning the scope of the Presidency for memberstates. The limitations of the most common approaches are discussed brieflyand the utility of an explanation based on historical institutionalism isaddressed. The second part analyses the institutional development of thePresidency between 1951 and the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007.Three major historical moments are identified and examined: the creation(1951), the reproduction (1965–83) and the institutional conversion of thePresidency (1986–onwards). The main conclusion is that the implications ofthe Presidency office have not always been the same. Between the Presidencyof the Special Council of the first European Community of 1951 and thePresidency of the Council of the Union of 2007, fifty years have gone by inwhich much more than the name has changed. The Presidency has beentransformed and this institutional development has locked in the scope ofaction of the member states.
The Presidency Dilemma
The historical development of the Council Presidency has received relativelylimited attention in existing literature. Following the pioneering work byWallace and Edwards (1976), a marginal number of authors devoted theirefforts to the specific study of the evolution of this institution (Wallace 1985;de Bassompierre 1988; di Bucci 1988; Kirchner 1992; Westlake 1999). Todate, the majority of the literature on the Presidency has centred its attentionon another issue: the consequences of the presidential mandate for the memberstates. Indeed, the leap in the powers of the Presidency over the years has ledan increasing number of authors to question the implications of the exerciseof the Presidency for member states that for six months on a periodic androtational basis occupy this post. Starting from the analysis of the role of thePresidency in terms of organization, impulsion, mediation and representationboth within and outside the Union, various authors have tried to establish thelevel of responsibility and/or political opportunity that the exercise of thisfunction implies (e.g. Elgström 2003; Bengtsson, Elgström, and Tallberg2004; Tallberg 2006; Warntjen 2007; Thomson 2008).
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(I) A Question of Role Conception
Three principal hypotheses have been formulated regarding the question ofwhether the Presidency offers extraordinary opportunities for political influ-ence. One part of the literature considers that the holding of the Presidencyrepresents a great responsibility that does not, however, bring about anypolitical power for the state concerned (e.g. Dewost 1984; Metcalfe 1988).From this perspective, the Presidency is a communitarian function thatinvolves placing national administrations at the service of the Union andsubordinating the pursuit of national interests to that of common interest(O’Nuallain 1985; Verbeke and Van den Voorde 1994). Seen in this light, thePresidency is essentially a neutral and impartial role that prohibits politicalcapitalization, except for the prestige obtained as a result of a job well done.
Another body of literature argues the contrary: that the Presidency isessentially an intergovernmental function (e.g. Ayral 1975; Tallberg 2003;2004; Warntjen 2007). From this perspective, the holding of the Presidencyplaces the member states in a privileged position, which allows them to guidethe European agenda and to maximize their own interests. This secondhypothesis, which is anchored in a rationalist theoretical framework, ques-tions the disinterested nature of the Presidency and highlights the level ofdiscretional power inherent to its exercise.
In contrast to these two principal approaches that highlight, respectively,the ‘silencer or amplifier’ character of the Presidency (Bengtsson, Elgström,and Tallberg 2004), a third line of interpretation has emerged. This visionnuances the previous views and sustains that the presidential role combinesboth communitarian and intergovernmental components (e.g. Wallace 1986;Kirchner 1992; Ludlow 1993; 1998; Schout 1998; Westlake 1999). Accord-ing to this vision, the Presidency is a complex role in which responsibility andopportunity are present at the same time. As the prominent figure within theCouncil, and therefore as one of the main bridges between the supranationaland intergovernmental dimensions of the Union, the Presidency implies abalancing act between the individual interests of national governments andthe general interests of the Community.
This debate regarding the dilemma of the Presidency in terms of roleconception, defined, following Beyers (2005, 902), as ‘the behaviourexpected given the member states’ specific institutional position’ when exer-cising the Presidency, is particularly interesting. Nevertheless, the approachused by scholars to contrast these suppositions is not completely satisfactory.The usual approach to determine the competing or complementary expecta-tions that arise from the tenure of the Presidency consists of analysing thecurrent competencies of this institution. Most of the existing studies centrethe subject of the Presidency from the perspective of the relative power givento the member states and, in this way, focus on the mechanisms at thedisposal of the Presidency to influence the European agenda (e.g. Sherrington2000; Tallberg 2006; Warntjen 2007; Thomson 2008).
This type of perspective, while useful, fails to address two previous andinterrelated questions that are fundamental if one is to gauge the nature of
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this impact. In the first instance, what is the relative position occupied by theCouncil Presidency within the European institutional system? Secondly, towhat extent has this rank been stable over time? In other words, how can oneresolve the question of the implications of the Presidency for the agents of thepolitical system in terms of representation of interests without first establish-ing the scope of this institution within the overall system and considering thefact this relative institutional position has changed throughout the years?
To sum up, the main problem of most of the analyses resides in the staticconception of the structure–agency relationship. While considerable effortshave been spent in scrutinizing the semesters and in comparing nationalperformances (e.g. Svensson 2000; Elgström 2003; Quaglia and Moxon-Browne 2006), little attention has been paid to the institutional variation ofthe Presidency over time. The evolution of the Presidency is mentioned, butinstitutional change as an explanatory factor of the actual scope of this func-tion for the member states — the level of responsibility and/or opportunitythat its exercise involves — is not considered. Taking this into account, thisarticle claims there is a need to situate the study of the structure–agencyrelationship within a historical perspective in order to understand fully theimpact of the Presidency on the member states. More specifically, it arguesthat if there is no doubt that the presidential term of office constitutes anespecially relevant moment in terms of the interaction between the Europeanand the national spheres, it should, however, be stated that its effects havenot always been the same. The scope of the Presidency for the member stateshas varied in function of the evolving position of this institution within theEuropean system.
By explicitly addressing the variable of institutional change when analys-ing the political consequences of the Presidency office, this article seeks tocontribute to bridging the gap between the literature on the historical devel-opment of the Council Presidency and the literature that has focused on thecurrent consequences of this development. Until now, the work of Tallbergconstitutes the main contribution in this respect. In his book on the ‘powersof the chair’ (Tallberg 2006), he argued that the Presidency has beentransformed into a platform for the defence of national interests. Thepresent article qualifies this by arguing that while there is evidence thatpoints to a certain degree of opportunism in the exercise of the Presidency,there does appear to be a growing trend towards the communitarization ofthis function.
(II) A Historical Institutionalist Appraisal
The basic hypothesis is that the Council Presidency is not a constant variable.Five decades of institutional feedback have altered its nature, and this processof institutional conversion has locked in the scope of action of the memberstates. In 1952, the Presidency had a low-profile, intergovernmental functionwithin the Community system.1 Its powers were limited and were basicallyadministrative in nature. The functioning of the erstwhile Special Council ofthe European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was simple and had little
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formal organization. In this context, the Presidency had a mostly symbolicimportance for the member states. The presidential mandate neither involveda great deal of responsibility nor major organizational efforts, although, onthe other hand, it did provide a mechanism to ensure equal representationwithin the Council (di Bucci 1988; Magnette and Nicolaïdis 2003).
Fifty years later, things have changed. Five decades of institutional increas-ing return effects have considerably upgraded this institution and led to itsprogressive communitarization. This office no longer represents a mereadministrative role identified with the defence of intergovernmental interests.It has become a complex exercise increasingly associated with the defence ofCommunity interests. Historical institutionalism is the approach used toconfirm this hypothesis.
The usefulness of this theory lies fundamentally in the theoretical impor-tance attributed to the time factor and, more specifically, to the historicaltrajectory of institutional options (e.g. Hall and Taylor 1996; Aspinwalland Schneider 2000; Pierson 2004). This school of neo-institutionalismaccepts the realist premise that the starting point of institutional design isthe rational choice of political actors, and proceeds to research the long-terms effects of the initial decision, stressing the contingent nature of sucheffects. From this approach, current political outcomes should be inter-preted in the light of past institutional choices (Krasner 1984; 1988; Bulmer1994; Thelen 2003). The actors that create the institutions are, at the sametime, conditioned by the development of the institutions themselves. Themain feature of this evolution is its continuity or path dependency. Thegreater the time elapsed, the greater the difficulty involved in going back tothe original choices and implementing alternative solutions, even if they aremore efficient (David 1985; Arthur 1989). The amortization of the initialinvestment, the experience acquired and the coordination with other insti-tutions all produce inertias (Pierson 1993). In this context, changes withregard to the original model tend to be limited and set in a pre-establishedpattern of development.
However, institutions do undergo substantial changes. To explain this,historical institutionalism uses the term of ‘critical juncture’, a concept thatis similar to the ‘performance crisis’ coined by March and Olsen in 1989, andis based on the idea of a turning point in the development of a system.Profound changes are not frequent, while the catalyst is to be found in thesocio-political environment and takes the form of an event that is at onceexceptional and crucial, with the result that the foundations are laid for anew path to be established (March and Olsen 1984; 1989). Such a change indirection may involve the creation of norms and procedures that break, to agreater or lesser degree, with the institutional legacy of the past. The institu-tional transformation may be complete or partial, but it will contribute to thedevelopment of new models of representation and behaviour.
Overall, by situating the structure–agency relationship in a dynamic anddiachronic perspective, historical institutionalism allows us to shed light onthe mechanisms of innovation, reproduction and institutional change as wellas to make clear the impact of this evolution on the behaviour of political
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actors (Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth 1992). In other words, the analyti-cal importance attributed to the structure–agency dialectic over time allowsus to sequentialize institutional development and to examine the evolution ofthe structuring effect of the institutions on political action. In this sense, ithelps to show the long-term implications of institutional decisions. In thecase of the Council Presidency, this approach is interesting because it allowsus: to trace the path of this institution since its creation; to identify the keymoments that have marked its development; and to highlight both the roleplayed by the member states in driving this process of change and its lock-ineffect regarding the definition of future actions.
The EU Council Presidency: Analysis of a Changing Nature
The literature offers numerous examples of the ‘selfishness’ that tends tocharacterize the exercise of the Presidency (e.g. Elgström 2003; Tallberg2004). This section argues that this tendency to seek the maximization ofindividual interests is based on an essentially national conception of thepresidential mandate that was forged in the early decades of European inte-gration, and that is now undergoing a process of change.
The Creation of the Council Presidency as an Intergovernmental Guarantee
The original institutional design of the EU Council Presidency should beinterpreted in the light of the political negotiations that presided over thecreation of the first European Community. In 1951 the main concern ofthe founder states was the autonomy of the High Authority (Houben 1964;Dinan 2004, 51). The idea contained in the Schuman Declaration was tocreate a supranational institution that would be independent of nationalgovernments. This caused misgivings among the contracting parties and, inparticular, among the Benelux States, who finally conditioned their partici-pation in the European project on the creation of a Council of Ministersthat would institutionalize member-state participation in the Communitystructure (Spierenburg and Poidevin 1993, 13; Rittberger 2001, 695). Thiswas the source of a hybrid political system based on the principle of institu-tional balance. The power of the High Authority, the forum of the represen-tation of the general interest of the Community, was counterbalanced bythe creation of a Special Council of Ministers, a body of collective controland the centre of member-state interests (de Visscher 1957, 23; Kersten1988, 293).
The Presidency of the EU Council finds its origins in this context charac-terized by the will to organize the conditions of state participation in thecommunitarian enterprise. Its beginnings were modest in terms of competen-cies but important from a symbolic and political point of view. Effectively,the Presidency was designed as a double institutional guarantee. On the onehand, it represented governmental interests within the communitarian struc-ture, which, at that time, allowed for the powerful figure of Jean Monnet(first president of the High Authority) to be counterbalanced.2 On the other
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hand, it also guaranteed the equal representation of the member states withinthe Council (Dumoulin 1988; Crum 2007). The conditions regarding howthe Presidency would be attributed and exercised could be summed up interms of two key principles: representation and equality. Both were set outin Art. 27 of the Treaty of the ECSC and were considered to be, untilrecently, non-negotiable by the small states of the Union. This system, whoseprecedent was Art. IV of the Internal Rules of Procedure of the Council ofthe League of Nations of 1933 (see Goodrich and Hambro 1946, 137; Bailey1988), involved two ideas. First, the fact that the Presidency would beassumed by the member states and not by a collective representative.Secondly, the idea that each member state would exercise this function peri-odically on a rotating basis, regardless of its demographic size or economicand political power (di Bucci 1988, 5). During this first stage, the rotationsequence was fixed by the alphabetical order of the member states in theFrench language.3 By choosing an institutional design based on the principlesof representativeness and equality, the founding states ensured a nationalprofile for the Presidency, in contrast to the communitarian profile of thePresidency of the High Authority. This was also foreseen by the Treaties ofRome,4 and was reinforced during the shift to intergovernmentalism in the1960s.
The Reproduction of the Council Presidency in the Shadow of Increasing Intergovernmentalism
The 1960s and 1970s marked the functional ‘take off’ of the Presidency(Wallace 1985; di Bucci 1988; Kirchner 1992), as well as the strengtheningof its intergovernmental character. The shift in the balance of power betweenthe Council and the Commission, sparked by events such as the LuxembourgCompromise in 1966, the launch of the European Political Cooperation(EPC) in 1970 or the creation of the European Council in 1974, contributedto both a quantitative increase in the powers of the Presidency and to rein-force its initial institutional design.
The first great drive to increase the powers of the Presidency occurred afterthe election of Charles de Gaulle to the Presidency of the fifth French Republicin January 1959. Critical of the supranational thesis of the Founding Fathersthat gave the power of political initiative to the Commission, De Gaulle calledfor a central role for states in the European system (De Gaulle 1971, 1030;Teasdale 1993; Palayret, Wallace, and Winand 2006). From the perspectiveof the Council Presidency, the struggle for a European model based on mech-anisms of cooperation between states instead of transfers of sovereignty to asupranational institution, which reached a high point with the institutionalcrisis of 1965 and the adoption of the Luxembourg Compromise in January1966, had a noteworthy result. This was the end of the monopoly of theCommission in terms of the external representation of the European Commu-nities and its substitution by a dual system based on the idea of the right toactive and passive legation shared between the President of the Commissionand the Council President.5
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The second qualitative increase in the powers of the Presidency came aboutas a result of the adoption of the Davignon and Copenhagen Reports inOctober 1970 and July 1973, respectively. By opting to create and developthe EPC mechanism on an intergovernmental basis, the member states trans-formed the scope of the Presidency within the European system. Apart fromextending its responsibilities in administrative areas, the Presidency’s politi-cal potential was activated, since the initiative, mediation and executivepowers granted by the treaties to the Commission in the communitarianfield were granted similarly to the Presidency in intergovernmental matters(Davignon Report 1970; Copenhagen Report 1973; de Bassompierre 1988,60–4).
This institutional upgrading implied, on the one hand, an unprecedentedchallenge for the national administrations periodically involved — partly dueto the functional differentiation established between EC affairs and EPCmatters and the lack of agreement on the creation of a permanent secretariatuntil the Single European Act (SEA) — and, on the other hand, a new role ofpolitical leadership (Allen, Rummel, and Wessels 1982, 159). Since the 1970s,the success or failure of the presidential term began to depend on politicalcriteria as well as on its capacity to make proposals, negotiate and find formu-lae of consensus in the intergovernmental domain (Schoutheete 1980, 43).
In this sense, the creation of the European Council in December 1974also needs to be highlighted. The institutionalization of the Conferences ofHeads of States and Governments, which had taken place without a fixedtimetable since 1961, endowed the European building with a superstructure(Brückner 1982, 60; Bulmer and Wessels 1987; Taulègne 1993). This insti-tutional development had an important consequence for the Presidency inthat it meant that the symmetrical presidential model of the Communityand the EPC pillars was transferred to the highest organ of the Europeansystem.6 This new desire of the member states for a single Presidency oncemore gave greater power to the institution. It granted the Presidency theresponsibility of representing the European Council outside, as well aswithin, the European Communities and of preparing materially and politi-cally all its meetings. From a symbolic point of view, the consequences ofthis incrementalist path were no less relevant: the extension of the foundingprinciples of the Presidency — representativeness and equality — to the topof the institutional architecture.
The Conversion of the Council Presidency: the Communitarization of an Intergovernmental Function
For decades, the Presidency was conceived essentially as an intergovernmen-tal counterweight to the supranational dynamic embodied by the EuropeanCommission. As Wallace (2002, 328) pointed out, the design of the ECrested on an institutional balance between two levels of governance: (1) theCommunity with the Commission, advocate of collective proposals; and (2)the national with the Council and, thus, the Presidency — forum of themember states. Since the middle of the 1980s, this clear-cut pattern in terms
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of role conception has changed. Two main factors can be identified that havetransformed, in particular, the Council Presidency into one that is concernedincreasingly with Community interests: the reactivation of the supranationaldynamic since the 1980s and the institutional reform process that has accom-panied the latest and largest enlargement of the EU.
Conditioning Factors (I): the Re-launching of the European Integration Process After the SEA
After many years in which intergovernmentalism had dominated, theEuropean integration process found a new lease of life with the signing of theSEA in 1986 and of the European Union Treaty (TEU) in 1992. The dynam-ics created by these first two reforms of the founding treaties had an unprec-edented effect on the growth in the responsibilities of the Council Presidencyin both the intergovernmental and the supranational ambit of the EU. Thisnew assignment of tasks gave rise to the transformation of an institution,traditionally considered to be a bastion of governmental interests within theCommunity structure, into a driving force of the overall integration process.Despite the fact that, in practice, variations exist between countries, informal terms — legal, procedural and political — there was a qualitative leapforward in the communitarian duties of the Council Presidency. This turningpoint is reflected in at least two missions that the member states granted atthat time to the Presidency, and in the fact that, for the first time, with theformal introduction of semester programmes in January 1989 (in accordancewith the Stuttgart Declaration of 1983), a results-based obligation was intro-duced (Stuttgart Declaration 1983, 26).
First, in addition to a substantial widening of powers in intergovernmentalmatters (see Westlake 1999; Tallberg 2006), the member states added a newdimension to the Presidency by making it jointly responsible with a reacti-vated Commission for the implementation of the Internal Market and forEconomic and Monetary Union (Armstrong and Bulmer 1998, 77). One ofthe consequences of this decision was a revised working relationship betweenthe Council Presidency and the Commission. The rather conflictive naturethat for years had characterized relations between both institutions, as aresult of the adoption of the Luxembourg Compromise, gave way to a newclimate of cooperation based on reinforced joint responsibility for the imple-mentation of common policies. An example of this legally inducted synergywas the presentation of a joint strategy by the Luxembourg, British andAustrian presidencies in 1997–8 in order to develop the Commission’s SingleMarket Action Plan 1997–9 (Council of the EU 1997).
This was reinforced by the re-introduction and extension of qualifiedmajority voting in the Council. As a high-level official of the CouncilGeneral Secretariat pointed out, ‘the formal generalisation of this votingmethod in economic integration potentially transformed the Council Presi-dency into one of the principal allies of the European Commission’.7 Theadvances made towards the Single Market and EMU depended on thesuccess of votes taken in the Council. This, in turn, was conditioned largely
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by the capacity of the President to construct a majority (Westlake 1999, 43;Tallberg 2006, 60).
A second element that contributed to increasing the centrality of the Pres-idency’s role in the direction of the European integration, not only from anintergovernmental perspective but also from a supranational one, concernsits institutionalization as a link between the two functional dynamics of theEU. Until the SEA, the Council Presidency constituted an informal bridgebetween the process towards economic integration taking place within thethree European Communities and the mechanism of Political Co-operation,which remained outside the Treaties. On granting a single legal frameworkto these two dimensions of European construction, the SEA took an importantstep forward towards closing the gap between the two systems; a step thatwas confirmed by the TEU of 1992, which reinforced the centrality of thePresidency within the European system. According to the Maastricht Treaty(Art. C of Title I on Common Dispositions), it was the mission of both theCommission and the Council to guarantee the coherence between the activitiesof the three pillars of the EU, as well as to ensure mutual inter-institutionalcooperation in order to achieve this objective. Currently, the increased degreeof cross-pillarization of European policies, for example in the area of justiceand home affairs, has turned this legal norm into a basic principle of EU policymaking.8
Overall, the change of direction in the process of European constructionsince the mid-1980s has had an impact on the Council Presidency. Apartfrom extending its powers, the SEA and TEU represent critical junctures inthe sense that they have been the catalyst for a qualitative shift in the devel-opment of the Presidency by giving it new and explicit responsibilities forEuropean integration and, consequently, for the defence of the general inter-ests of the Union. The recent evolution of the integration process and, inparticular, that of institutional reform, which began in the mid-1990s in thecontext of the fifth enlargement of the EU and of the debate on the future ofEurope, confirms this tendency.
Conditioning Factors (II): the Institutional Reform in the Face of Enlargement and the Debate on the Future of Europe
Since the implosion of the Soviet bloc in 1991 and the end of the bipolarorder, Europe faced the greatest challenge of its recent history: the end of itsdivision. For more than ten years, the most important enlargement ineconomic, political and symbolic terms centred the interests of the memberstates, although at the same time, it was a cause for concern. In institutionalterms, there was little doubt about the need to adapt the structuresconstructed around just six member states. Yet, one of the main questionsconsisted of deciding how to organize and distribute powers both within andbetween European institutions in a widened political arena (Olsen 2002), ina way that was efficient from a functional point of view and politicallybalanced. This debate on the rules of the European political game has lastedfor nearly a decade. During all of these years, one of the most controversial
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questions that has arisen has been the reform of the rotational presidentialsystem.
This is not a new issue. Since the dawn of European construction, there havebeen various attempts to reform a model afflicted by a central problem: thelack of continuity. As the powers of the Presidency have been extended, theissue of rotation, first by trimester (1951–7) and then by semester (1958–)has been called increasingly into question.9 The main difficulty associated withintroducing substantial modifications in the actual system has alwaysstemmed from the firm support given by the member states, particularly thesmaller ones, to the fundamental principles of the Presidency: representationand equality.
However, the challenge of enlargement has accelerated the necessity forreform. In this context, since the middle of the 1990s, two parallel processesaimed at improving the workings of the Council have been taking place. Onthe one hand, since 1999, the General Secretariat of the Council has issuedseveral proposals that have led to five reforms of the Council’s Rules ofProcedure in less than six years.10 On the other, there is the negotiation onthis same subject that occurred in the frame of the debate for the revisionof the treaties. Both processes confirm the tendency towards a greater degreeof communitarization of the Presidency.
To start with, between 1999 and 2002, the General Secretariat of theCouncil published four successive reports aimed at improving the workingmethods of the Council in the face of an enlarged Europe. One of the prior-ities identified to achieve this objective consisted of correcting the lack ofcontinuity inherent in the rotating presidency (Council of the EU 1999;2001a; 2001b; 2002a). The first specific measures in this direction wereadopted during the European Council of Helsinki (December 1999) in whichtwo operational measures were taken on board — the presence of the forth-coming Presidency in Community issues and global assistance of the GeneralSecretariat of the Council (00300/1/99) — with the aim of consolidating theleading position of the Presidency and of improving the coherence of itswork. However, the real breakthrough in this respect came with theEuropean Council of Seville in June 2002 (Council of the EU 2002b). Follow-ing the recommendations of the Secretary-General of the Council, JavierSolana, the Heads of State and Government adopted several measures tochange the functioning of the Presidency substantially (Council of the EU2002a). It was specified, however, that ‘any adaptation of the current systemof rotation by semester should continue to respect the principle of equalityamong all the member states’ (Council of the EU 2002b).
The most significant innovation concerned the issue of the programmingof Council activities. In his report, Solana had proposed to extend theprogramme of the Presidency over two or three semesters (Council of the EU2002a). The European Council went much further than this, in finally givingits support to a proposal put forward by the Spanish Presidency that contem-plated the idea of a programme extended over several years (Council of theEU 2002c). The formula finally approved was the strategic multi-annualprogramme extended to three years from December 2003, as well as the
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presentation of an annual operational programme of activities in Decemberof each year.11 These proposals were introduced in the Council’s new Rulesof Procedure, which came into force on July 23 2002. This occurred togetherwith other significant procedural innovations, such as the reinforcement ofthe cooperation mechanisms between successive presidencies (Arts 19 and20), and the attribution of the chair of certain technical working groups tothe General Secretariat of the Council,12 an exception to the rotation systemthat confirms the increasingly extended practice in recent years of designat-ing stable presidencies for certain committees or working groups.13
Overall, the European Council of Seville marked a milestone in the processof reform of the Presidency. The measures adopted confirmed a change ofdirection in the evolutionary path of the Presidency. The ideas of a multi-annual programme, of partially co-presided mandates and of ‘supranationalchairmanship’ (Tallberg 2006) have involved a break with the initial formatof the Presidency. In Seville, the principle of equality was maintained, but theprinciples of representation and uniqueness have been modified. The changesintroduced to improve the functioning of the Council reformed the foundingprinciples of the Presidency.
At this moment in time, and pending the ratification of the Treaty ofLisbon, the trends outlined above would appear to be confirmed by theresults of the IGC 2007 for the revision of the Treaties. For almost sevenyears a fierce debate has raged over the future of the presidential rotationsystem and, in particular, over the design and designation of the Presidencyof the Foreign Affairs Council and of the Presidency of the European Council(Quermonne 2002; Schoutheete and Wallace 2002; Magnette and Nicolaïdis2003). First, the European Convention, followed by the IGCs of 2003/2004and IGC 2007, placed this question on the agenda.14 The results of thesethree rounds of negotiation over the future of Europe confirm the change ofdirection in the evolution of the Council Presidency.
The Constitutional Treaty included the principle of the election of the Pres-ident of the European Council by a qualified majority for a period of two anda half years, renewable only once. Such a measure, confirmed by the ICG2007 results, has various consequences. On the one hand, it detaches thePresidency of the Council from the Presidency of the European Council,therefore putting an end to the system in place since 1974. On the other, itimplies designating as the head of the European Council a new political actorwho, in the absence of a national mandate, will appear, at least in theory, asa supra partes figure and no longer as a primus inter pares (Blavoukos,Bourantonis, and Pagoulatos 2007; Crum 2007).
Secondly, the constitutional Treaty institutionalized the Foreign AffairsMinister, appointed for a five-year term, who would, inter alia, chair theForeign Affairs Council. This new figure, who has been called again the‘High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’in the Treaty of Lisbon, in an attempt to downplay any reminiscence ofstate vocabulary in the new text, would also be the vice-president of theEuropean Commission. With this measure, the Constitution not onlysuppressed the rotational system of semesters based on the principles of
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equality and representation (given that, in principle, on the date that themodified Treaty comes into place, this function would fall to the Secretary-General of the Council15), but also contributed to communitarize theForeign Affairs Council. This dual role of the new High Representativewould effectively involve the difficult task of juggling the intergovernmentalinterests of the Council with the supranational interests of the Commission.In addition, the Constitution considered the strengthening of the measuresagreed in Seville for the rest of the Council formations. In contrast to whatthe Convention had proposed, it maintained the rotational system bysemesters but within a team presidency made up of three countries, there-fore pushing the idea of a combined mandate. The constitutional Treatyalso allowed the General Secretariat of the Council to take over the Presi-dency of more working groups in the future and, actually, the Treaty ofLisbon lays down that the Presidency of the Political and Security Commit-tee would fall to a delegate of the High Representative of the EU. Lastly,the constitutional text introduced the possibility of modifying by majoritythe means of attributing the Presidency and its tenure.
With these measures the constitutional Treaty not only reorganized theCouncil Presidency and, as such, had an impact on its way of working, butalso affected symbolic issues tied to the underlying values of the Presidencythat have endured since its origins. The Treaty of Lisbon seems to confirmthis shift. In the case of ratification, these dispositions would mean the endof an age and a system; indeed, they undermine the principles of equality,representation and uniqueness that have been inherent in the role of the Pres-idency since 1951. In this respect, they represent a departure in the system ofrepresentation of the member states within the European polity.
To summarize, between the Presidency of the Special Council of the firstEuropean Community of 1951 and the Presidency of the Council of theUnion of 2007, fifty years have gone by in which much more than the namehas changed. The Presidency has been transformed, both quantitatively andqualitatively, whereby the exponential increase in its functions over the yearshas been accompanied by a change in its institutional nature. The Presidencyhas been communitarized. The presidential mandate is no longer a role ofadministrative manager and spokesperson of state interests in the heart of theCommunity, but rather has become a complex role of drive, coordination,negotiation, mediation and representation both in the supranational andintergovernmental areas of the Union.
This evolution has been contingent. During the first decades of the integra-tion process, the role and nature of the Presidency were shaped essentially bythe dialectic of power between the Council and the European Commission.The inter-institutional debate meant that the Presidency was conceived anddeveloped essentially as an intergovernmental check within the Communitysystem. Since the 1980s, this has been qualified. Critical junctures, such asthe SEA and the TEU, led to a more cooperative inter-institutional dynamic,based on a reinforced partnership between the Presidency and the Commis-sion in the fields of implementation and coordination of European policies.Legally at least, this led to an increasing association of the Presidency with
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the defence of collective views. The functional pressure to improve the work-ing methods of the Council in the face of the enlargement and of futurescenarios confirmed this. The reforms carried out since 1999 in the treatiesin force and those foreseen by the Treaty of Lisbon, which is still to beratified, reinforce this trend towards the supranationalization of the CouncilPresidency.
This institutional evolution has exerted an influence on the conceptualiza-tion of the role of the Presidency, namely on the expectations about whatconstitutes the appropriate behaviour of the member states in the specificposition of the Presidency office. Despite the fact that, in practice, there existvariations across countries, the changes — legal, procedural and political —that have occurred since the 1980s in the design of the institution, especiallyin terms of the qualification of the guiding principles of representativenessand equality in force since the 1950s, have contributed to the ‘de-national-ization’ of this role. Today, the Council Presidency has both intergovernmen-tal and communitarian features. The extent to which the member states havedigested such a change is still open to question.
Conclusion
Since the 1970s, the majority of the literature on the EU Council Presidencyhas focused on identifying the competing and/or complementary expecta-tions underlying the role of the Presidency. The usual approach to addressthis question consists of analysing the relative power given to the memberstates and, in particular, the instruments at the disposal of the Presidency toinfluence the European agenda. In this article, the objective has been todemonstrate the relevance of placing the analysis of this question in a histor-ical perspective, since, as Lowndes (1996, 193) highlighted, ‘institutions areprocesses and not static realities’. In particular, the aim has been to underlinethe changing nature of the Council Presidency, the evolution of the institu-tional position of the Presidency within the EU system, and the consequencesof this evolution for the member states in terms of role conception and, thus,behaviour.
Once this has been done, a conclusion has been reached that, indeed, theinstitutional position of the Presidency has not always been the same. In1951, the Presidency had an intergovernmental function with a low politicalprofile. The ambits were limited and were essentially administrative. In theimage of the then Special Council, the way of working was simple and itsorganization reduced to the minimum. In this context, the scope of thePresidency for the member states was above all of a symbolic nature. Thispresidential mandate involved neither a great deal of responsibility nor majororganizational efforts, although, on the other hand, it did provide a mecha-nism to ensure equal representation within the Council.
Fifty years later, things have changed. Five decades of increasing returneffects have managed to communitarize this institution. This change innature has meant an exponential growth of presidential functions and hassimultaneously transformed the principles upon which this institution
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functioned for decades. The initial symbolism that surrounded the Presi-dency has been eroded. What was conceived as a purely intergovernmentalfunction, has become identified increasingly with Community interests. Inorder to determine and compare the extent to which this process of institu-tional change has been, and will be, assimilated by the member statesrequires further analysis.
Acknowledgement
The author is grateful to Simon Bulmer, Renaud Dehousse, Nuria Font,Johan P. Olsen, Sophie Vanhoonacker and Helen Wallace, as well as to twoanonymous referees for their comments and suggestions on earlier versionsof this article.
Notes1. See the minutes of the first Special Council session, Sep. 8 1952 (Conseil de la CECA 1952a).2. See the discourses pronounced respectively by Konrad Adenauer, first President of the Special
Council, and Jean Monnet, during the first session of the Council, Sep. 8 1952 (Conseil de la CECA1952b; 1952c).
3. According to this rule, the first meeting of the Special Council of Ministers that was held in Luxembourgon Sep. 8 1952 was presided over by Germany (‘Allemagne’) (see Conseil de la CECA 1952b).
4. By way of example, during the negotiations surrounding the Treaties of Rome, the Benelux countriesand, in particular, Luxembourg, strongly defended their ‘participation in the steering organs of theCouncils of the EEC and Euratom’. See Note of Luxembourg Delegation of Sep. 13 delivered to thenegotiating commission led by Paul-Henri Spaak. Doc. 271/56. Quoted in Spaak (1987, 68).
5. This change, which is contemplated in Annex II of the Luxembourg Compromise that deals specifi-cally with the question of the relations between the Council of Ministers and the Commission, wasthe direct result of the Decalogue presented on Jan. 17 1966 by the French Government (see Conseilde la CEE 1966).
6. Eight Summits were held between Feb. 1961 and Dec. 1974 that, in terms of organization and overalldirection, did not necessarily coincide with the holding of the Council Presidency of the EuropeanCommunities (e.g. the summits of Paris (Feb. 1961) and Rome (May 1967) were held under theBelgium Presidency).
7. Interview, Brussels, Nov. 9 2004.8. For example, the Council Presidency and the Commission are jointly responsible for the implemen-
tation of the Hague Programme (2004–9), a horizontal programme that covers both Title IV of theTEC and Title VI of the TEU (see Council and European Commission 2005).
9. See, for instance, the Tindemans Report in 1975 (Tindemans Report 1976); the Three Wise MenReport in 1979; the London Report (1981); and the Stuttgart Declaration (1983).
10. Between 1951 and 1969, the Council’s Rules of Procedure had been modified only twice: in 1957due to the signing of the Treaties of Rome and in 1969 due the adoption of the definitive Council’sRules of Procedure.
11. In December 2002, Greece and Italy presented the first operational programme (Council of the EU2002d). In December 2003, Ireland, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, the UK, Austria and Finlandelaborated the first strategic multi-annual programme (2004–6) (Council of the EU 2003).
12. Working Groups of ‘Electronic Communications’, ‘Legal Data Processing’, ‘Codification ofLegislation’, ‘Information’, ‘New Buildings’.
13. In June 2002, the Spanish Presidency pointed out five exceptions: the Economic Policy Committee,the ECOFIN Committee, the Code of Conduct Group (Business Taxation), the Military Committee,and the Security Committee (Council of the EU 2002c).
14. See the position of the Benelux countries during the IGC 2003/2004 (IGC 2003).15. See Council of the EU (2004).
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