Political Leadership in the European Union by Ingeborg Tommel & Amy Verdun

Author:Ingeborg Tommel & Amy Verdun [Tommel, Ingeborg & Verdun, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351183512
Goodreads: 41389337
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Leadership of Council and European Council presidents: theoretical approaches

Already under the rotating presidencies of the Council and the European Council, various studies analysed the leadership performance of the incumbents (see e.g. Elgström 2003; Beach and Mazzucelli 2008a; Alexandrova and Timmermans 2013). These studies questioned whether the presidents ‘mattered’ in reaching decisions, that is, whether they successfully set the agenda, mediated diverging national interests, and forged the necessary compromises. Some analyses also focused on whether final decisions reflected the common denominator of the participating states or rather matched the president’s interests or those of his/her home country. The results of these analyses, based either on quantitative or qualitative research methods, were mixed. Generally, scholars agreed that the presidencies were of the utmost importance for the functioning of the Council and did matter in reaching decisions (e.g. Metcalfe 1998; Hayes-Renshaw 2007; Westlake 2007). Some authors concluded that the incumbents influenced decisions in favour of their own preferences or those of their country of origin (Tallberg 2006; Schalk et al. 2007, 2008; Thompson 2008; Leconte 2012). Others, however, did not confirm such a bias; according to their findings, most decisions reflected the collective interests of the Council as a whole (see e.g. Alexandrova and Timmermans 2013). Some observers saw the room for presidencies to pursue national interests shrinking, particularly since the reforms of the Lisbon Treaty (Leconte 2012).

Scholarly analyses also sought to specify the conditions which enable presidencies to exercise political leadership. Beach and Mazzucelli (2008b), referring to the Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC)1 for Treaty reform, identified leadership resources, the impact of the negotiation context, and the choice of leadership strategies as crucial variables determining the success or failure of presidencies in the negotiation arena.

The theoretical insights summarised above mostly refer to the Council and the European Council alike, which both, before the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty, were subject to rotating presidencies. Yet there are significant differences between these two bodies. Such differences do not only follow from the nature of the respective decisions, but also the procedural rules which frame decision-making. In the case of the Council, the Commission with its exclusive right of initiative plays a crucial role in determining the agenda, as it submits the proposals for legislative acts and many other decisions. Hence, the Council presidents’ agenda-setting role is limited to selecting and prioritising issues from the spectrum proposed by the Commission. Furthermore, since decisions are in most cases taken by majority voting, the broker function is less demanding. This applies, however, only to brokering within the Council; externally, brokering has become more challenging because the ordinary legislative procedure requires a compromise with the EP.

The setting in the European Council is different. Although the Commission president participates in the meetings and is often prompted to prepare a proposal for finding common ground, other actors can also submit proposals: individual member states, groups of states, for example the German-French tandem, the General Affairs Council and, of course, the European Council as a whole and the rotating or ‘permanent’ presidency itself.

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