A perfect situation for a Council president

One of the main changes which will be introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon will be the creation of a full-time president of the European Council, replacing most tasks of the six-month current rotating presidency. The impending arrival of a new senior level figure to add to the presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament has prompted some thinking in national capitals and in Brussels.

A study from the Finnish Business and Policy Forum* on the European Council makes a number of recommendations for improving the workings of four summits which take place each year.

These include adding virtual European Councils via video-conferencing to help improve continuity between summits without the need for extra physical meetings. Another suggestion is creating specialist sub-committees to work on specific issues, making Council conclusions shorter and more readable and a renewed effort to ensure that EU leaders communicate the same common line following summits.

But it is hard to see how some of these recommendations could improve the current state of affairs. European Councils have proved to be supremely effective in setting the political priorities at EU level and endorsing them with the highest-level political authority through the active commitment of prime ministers and presidents to ensure effective implementation.

The rapid agreement on the new treaty itself and last March’s impressive package of measures on climate change and energy are just a few of the illustrations of the European Council at its most effective. As the uproar over UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s hesitancy about turning up in Lisbon last week to sign the new treaty showed, European Councils owe their effectiveness to the fact that they are rare occasions for EU leaders to spend time together and discuss the issues of the day which need attention and action at top EU level.

As one senior EU politician observed last week: "Those leaders who are not there are getting it wrong." More virtual European Councils would not deliver the same sort of political confidence-building and joint agenda-setting that a physical meeting brings.

The problem with the idea of sub-committees is that the Council already has them - a myriad of working groups and the specific Council formations prepare particular policies, such as energy, environment, agriculture or transport. The added value of summits is that EU leaders are able to break through deadlocks which are too sensitive for ministers to resolve. If transport and budget ministers had not been able to agree a deal on Galileo it would have been put on last week’s summit agenda.

The current situation is far from perfect. One could question the value of having four summits a year. The October sessions have effectively become informal while the March economic summits can lack focus and impact. The UK nearly cancelled its October summit in 2005 before changing its mind and holding the Hampton Court meeting, which gave impetus to the debates on energy and climate change.

With the creation of the full-time president, the rotating presidency does not disappear. The European Councils and external relations Council sessions will be chaired by the new president and high representative for foreign policy. But all other Council meetings for specific policies and a General Affairs Council will be chaired by ministers from a different member state every six months. The General Affairs Council could become a new policy co-ordinating body working to prepare European Councils, as capitals might not send their foreign ministers, but possibly their EU affairs ministers.

The test of the new structure will be how the Council president co-ordinates with the rotating presidency to ensure policy coherence and continuity and how he co-operates, or competes, with the Commission president. Much will depend on personality with a former prime minister from a large member state likely to play a major role in foreign affairs, potentially restricting the room for manoeuvre for the new high representative and Commission president. This would seem to be the case if former UK prime minister Tony Blair were a serious candidate. But as former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who drafted the EU constitution, rather cruelly pointed out this week, given the responsibility for co-ordinating policy, the first Council president could not realistically come from a country which was not in the euro or the Schengen travel zone and has opted out of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

* At Europe’s Highest Level: A More Effective European Council, David Harrison EVA, December 2007, www.eva.fi.

One of the main changes which will be introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon will be the creation of a full-time president of the European Council, replacing most tasks of the six-month current rotating presidency. The impending arrival of a new senior level figure to add to the presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament has prompted some thinking in national capitals and in Brussels.