The European Council and the Council

Abstract

Abstract This book offers a genuinely new perspective on the European Council and the Council of the European Union (‘the Council’). It portrays the two institutions as embodying the new intergovernmentalism in European Union governance. The book shows how post-Maastricht integration is based on an integration paradox. Member states are eager to foster integration, but insist that this is done outside the community method. This applies especially to prominent new areas of European Union activity including economic governance, common foreign, security and defence policy, and employment and social policy. The book explains how the evolution of these new areas has triggered institutional change. Policy coordination and intergovernmental agreement are identified as the main governance mechanisms. The European Council and the Council are at the centre of these processes. This book features a novel analytical framework—deliberative intergovernmentalism—to trace institutional change following the Treaty of Maastricht. Joint decision-making among member states is understood as non-legislative decision-making, which is geared towards permanent consensus seeking and direct member state involvement at all stages of the policy process. Empirically, the book offers one of the most comprehensive accounts of European Council and Council decision-making by covering two decades of European integration from the late 1990s until the years after the Lisbon Treaty came into force. Case studies analyse the European Council, the Eurogroup, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council, the Foreign Affairs Council, and the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council as well as the role of senior coordination committees.

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