What does it mean when a country has the ‘Presidency’?
The Presidency of the Council rotates among the Member States every six months in accordance with a sequence determined by the Council.
The Presidency of the Council has great significance for the way in which the work carried out by the Council is organised. The country which holds the Presidency has the task of organising and chairing all the Council’s meetings, and each country has its own priorities for the matters and areas it wishes to promote during the course of its Presidency.
Should negotiations reach an impasse, or should other problems arise, it is also the task of the country holding the Presidency to attempt to devise a solution. It is therefore important that the country holding the Presidency does not use its period of office to ‘feather its own nest’. The Presidency should be conducted in a neutral and impartial manner, and the country holding the Presidency must often set its own interests aside in favor of achieving unity among the Member States.
Only one Council configuration is not chaired by the six-monthly presidency: the Foreign Affairs Council, which, since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, has been chaired by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Since 1 December 2009 this post has been held by Ms Catherine Ashton. Roughly twenty working parties in the foreign affairs field also have a permanent chairman appointed by the High Representative.
Which country holds the Presidency is of great political importance, as it is the Presidency which is the driving force in EU cooperation and which sets the agenda and decides which subjects are to be given priority. For example, the absolute top priority of the Danish Presidency in the second six months of 2002 was to conclude the enlargement negotiations with up to ten new Member States.
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