Reforming the Council Presidency 

Reforming the Council Presidency

The European Council - the college of the Heads of State and Government - is the Union's supreme political authority. On occasion it can still fulfil its key role: that of giving strategic direction to the Union's increasingly wide policy agenda. However, its real work has frequently degenerated to last-minute bargaining over details, undertaken with the help of huge delegations and surrounded by a media circus, which detracts from the main business. Enlargement is likely to increase the ritualistic character of these meetings. Recently a number of proposals to change the system of rotating Presidencies have been presented. Our contribution to the debate deals with the level below the European Council, i.e. the chairmanship of Council of Ministers meetings, which are presently subject to the same principles of rotation. The spirit of our proposal is very close to ideas put forward by the UK Foreign Minister in a speech at The Hague, February 21st of this year. We would argue that it might be possible to retain the rotating presidency at the level of the Heads of State, while still restoring some efficiency to the overall Council machinery.

The European Council forms the apex of the entire Council machinery, which comprises over a dozen specialised, or 'ordinary' councils (e.g. Transport, Agriculture, etc.) and the so-called General Affairs Council of the Ministers of Foreign affairs. When a country takes over the rotating presidency, it has to lead and manage all of this. The job taxes the resources of most countries to the limit, and many problems cannot be solved at the level of the specialised Councils. These problems are then pushed up to the level of the Heads of State and thus clog up the meetings of the European Council.

The best way of allowing the Union's supreme College to carry out its proper task is to liberate the rotating Presidency from the task of managing the whole of the European policy process during its six months in office. There is no compelling reason why the country holding the Presidency should also be chairing the Transport Council, Agricultural Council, Financial Affairs Council, etc. While any Head of State or Government might be fully qualified to chair the meetings of the European Council, not all line ministries of all countries are able to assume the task of "governing" for a brief period the many specific areas of EU competence for the vast and diverse body that is the Europe of Fifteen or, soon, 25 or more countries.

We therefore suggest that the designation of the Chairmanship of ordinary Council meetings be determined by methods other than the current six-month rotation and the troika of past and future holders of the Presidency.

We propose that the chair of the technical Councils be (s)elected by its peers for a period of three years. The (s)election would be by QMV to ensure that the office holder has a broad base of consensus. Three years would be sufficient to get to know the dossier very well and to achieve some real breakthroughs. The Ministers so elected will have proven qualities of consensus-building and will have gained the respect of their colleagues because of their knowledge of the dossier. On this dimension, the present system is a lottery. They will also not represent countries whose interests are known to lie outside the centrist consensus in their particular area of policy - interests that must be artificially suppressed when rotation elevates its representative to the Presidency. The model of an elected chairman with longer periods of tenure has been successfully applied for the Chairmanship of the Economic and Financial Committee, which reports to ECOFIN.

The elected Chairmanship will be ad personam; if the portfolio changes hands at the national level before the end of the 3-year term, the successor (even if from the same party) has no claim on the rest of t he term. Also, the Chairman may resign if he/she feels that a more vigorous defence of the country's interests requires relinquishing the umpire's chair.

It might be suggested that this proposal would weaken the Commission, as the long-term Chairman will grow into a kind of "counter-commissioner". However, for the national Minister holding the Chair the European job will remain secondary to his main, national functions of office. Moreover, the tasks of the Commission and the Council are not identical. Indeed, the Commission's focus on the general interest could become sharper if the task of brokering member state consensus were put into competent hands.

How would this multinational council substructure mesh with the (rotating?) Presidency at the Head of States level? Under the informal style that is typical of the Council, the Chairmen of the specialised councils would report directly to the President, who thus will likely be of a different nationality) of the European Council. To prevent misunderstandings and last-minute surprises, the rotating Presidency could delegate one high official to be permanently attached to the Chairman's offices. With all the labour-intensive functions of preparing Council meetings in the hands of the Chair, one official is more than sufficient to identify issues of strategic importance that should be put on the European Council's agenda.

The Foreign Minister's Council presents a particular problem in this respect. This Council had traditionally the task of providing broad directions to the policy agenda and institutional development of the Union (hence the name 'General Affairs Council'). However, it has now largely lost this function, as foreign ministers are not qualified to speak for their colleagues in the Ministries of Finance, Agriculture, etc. To the extent that the Foreign Ministers concentrate on the foreign policy stance of the Union, the same principle of elective chairmanship applies. (An exception would be a new special council acting as formal sherpas for the summits, as is sometimes proposed.)

One advantage of our solution is that it would allow the abolition of the troika. That device was invented to assure a transfer of knowledge on highly complex technical dossiers in the jerky succession of rotating Presidencies. The elected Chairman, by definition, will not need it. Nor will the Head of Government holding the rotating Presidency. He will seek the advice and consent of all his peers. Abolishing the troika would avoid the sometimes-undignified representation of the Union abroad by three Heads of State, plus the High Representative. A committee is not the equal of the President of Russia and besides, it looks odd when talking to Arafat.

For small countries, in particular some of the new members, assuming the duties of a three-year Chairmanship would involve significant expenses for staff and travel, but as this would concern only one line ministry, the burden would be much lighter than that of the present rotating Presidency of all Councils. It is clear, moreover, that the Council Secretariat would assume a greater role, if only in administrative terms, to lighten the load on the Chairman's ministry and to provide a "communautaire" counterweight to any national "style" that might emerge during the long tenure of the Chairman.

Lastly, it may be objected that, mathematically, it may take half a century or more before each country gets "its" turn to chair a particular Council. That objection is trivial. First, to take a simple number including the Balkans, in a Union with thirty members it will take 15 years for a rotating Presidency to come round (preventing, incidentally, the build up of an institutional memory on how to run a Presidency). Secondly, with at least 14 technical Councils to be allocated, half of the member states may hold a chairmanship at any one time. The number could be increased by splitting up, for instance, agriculture and fisheries, transport and telecommunications, consumer and health, etc. This, as well as meeting in other, ad hoc combinations, is already Council practice. Small countries will find that that they can retain influence by specialising in the area that is of particular interest to them.

Presiding over a Council is not a sinecure; it is an office of the Union. Making it elective would provide a much-needed element of efficiency in a Union that will become unwieldy whatever the outcome of the Convention. Moreover, the professionalisation of ordinary Council meetings will allow the European Council to get back to discussing the big issues and set the political agenda.

Daniel Gros and Wolfgang Hager, CEPS Senior Research Fellows, June 2002.

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