ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two ‘power centres’ of the European Union (EU): the European Council and the presidency. The European Council brings together the heads of state or government of the member states and the President of the Commission. The former are assisted by their foreign ministers, the latter by an additional Member of the Commission. Since its creation in the mid-1970s, the European Council has played a—if not the—crucial role in the development of the European integration process. This relates to both the development of the EU’s political system (e.g. enlargement, treaty reform) and the shaping of policies in specific issue areas (e.g. monetary union, foreign and security policy). Given the crucial importance of the European Council, ascriptions of superlatives are easy to come by. For instance, the European Council is being referred to as ‘the supreme political body in the European Union’ (Tallberg 2008: 685), ‘a locus of power second to none in the European Union’s … institutional system’ (Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace 2006: 165), or ‘the source of all the major decisions taken over the past quarter of a century’ (Delors 2002).
