Text 1 RE: Der Ministerrat der Europäischen Union

The Council of Ministers

• The Council of the European Union is more often known as the Council of Ministers.
• It shares responsibility with the European Parliament for making EU law and approving the EU budget.
• The members provide indirect representation of the interests of citizens.
• They also defend national interests while trying to balance them with the goals of European integration.
• The Council makes decisions either by consensus or using a system of qualified majority voting.
• The presidency is held by each member state in rotations of six months.
• The detailed work is undertaken by a network of working parties and committees.
• Permanent representatives of the member states are based in Brussels and meet regularly as the Committee of Permanent Representatives, or Coreper.
• The Council of Ministers is where national government ministers make decisions on proposals for new laws.
• The Council of Ministers is headquartered in Brussels, its membership changing according to the policy area under discussion.
• Meetings are chaired by representatives from the presidency of the Council, which rotates among member states every six months.
• Most of the work is undertaken by Coreper.
• In conjunction with Parliament, the council decides which proposals for new EU laws and policies will be adopted, and also shares powers with Parliament for approving the EU budget.
• Most Council decisions use a qualified majority voting system, with each member state given a number of votes roughly in proportion to the size of its population.

Legislative function

• It is the part of governing process that is concerned with making laws, and is typically the responsibility of the legislature.
• The function usually includes the ability to propose, draft, amend and either approve or reject new laws, and to amend or cancel existing laws.
• In some political systems, proposals for new laws come from the executive, while in others those proposals come from the legislature itself.
• Input into the legislative process is also usually accompanied by authority to discuss, amend, and approve or reject the national budget.

Comparing legislative functions

• The European Commission and the European Parliament loom largest in public and political debates about the EU and its effect on the lives of Europeans.
• The Council of Ministers work rarely makes the news.
• Polls find that it is one of the least known and understood EU institutions.
• The Council has strong democratic credentials, given its members are part of the democratically elected governments of the member states.
• The Council also has significant power, sharing with Parliament the authority for the legislative function within the EU system.
• The Council has gone beyond an interest in legislative matters and increasingly focuses on broader policy debates, policy coordination and responses to crises.
• This has produced a shift in emphasis in the Council from lawmaking to policy coordination.
• Part of the difficulty with understanding the Council stems from its highly unusual character, with the closest point of equivalency lying in the bicameral legislatures that are found in about 40 per cent of the countries of the world.
• The EU Council of Ministers is not formally a second legislative chamber in the EU political system, but it has many of the functions of such a chamber, working in concert with the European Parliament.
• The Justus Lipsius building is where the Council of Ministers is headquartered.

How the Councils evolved

• The formal name of the Council is the Council of the European Union, although it is usually known simply as the Council of Ministers.
• The Council traces its roots back to the Special Council of Ministers that was part of the ECSC.
• Separate Councils of Ministers were created for the EEC and Euratom in 1958, and national interests moved to the fore as the balance of power shifted from the three Commissions to the three Councils.
• The three councils were combined in 1967 into a single Council of Ministers, under the Merger treaty.
• The Council has been torn between safeguarding the national interests of member states, while at the same time working to promote the interests of the Community.
• It was assumed that as Europe integrated and the member states learned to trust one another, the Council would become less important and the Commission would be able to initiate, decide and implement policy.
• In the event, the power and influence of the Council grew because member states were disinclined to give up powers to the Commission.
• The result was a perpetuation of the idea of the EEC as an intergovernmental organization.
• At the same time, however, both the European Council and the European Parliament have made inroads into the power of the Council of Ministers.

Intergovernmentalism

• It is an approach to understanding international relations that focuses on how governments interact with each other in the meeting rooms of intergovernmental organizations.
• It is a theory based on the argument that states are the key actors in the process of integration, and that they behave as rational actors.
• It is a model describing how representatives of the member states negotiate and make decisions.
• In theoretical terms, it looks at the costs and benefits to states of their participation in the EU.
• The most important of the EU institutions are the Council of Ministers and the European Council, both of which are made up of representatives from the member states

Leadership: The presidency

• Unlike the four other main institutions of the EU, the presidency of the Council of Ministers is held not by a single person but by the government of a member state.
• Each government takes turns in a pre-agreed rotation for six months, beginning in January and July each year.
• All meetings of the Council are organized and chaired by the relevant ministers from the country holding the presidency, giving its government a key role in setting the EU agenda for six months.
• The power of the presidency was reduced as a result of the Treaty of Lisbon, which gave the European Council its own president, while arranging for the Foreign Affairs Council to be chaired by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

Rotation of the presidency of the Council of Ministers

• The office of the presidency was once regarded as an 'administrative chore', but it came to be taken more seriously as more demands were made on the presidency to lead, manage agendas, broker agreements, and represent the EU to the outside world .
• The duties of the presidency today are as follows: preparing and coordinating work, arranging and chairing meetings and representing the Council mediating, bargaining and promoting cooperation.
• While the rotation was viable when there were only 6 or even 12 member states, it has lengthened as membership has grown, so that members must now each wait more than a dozen years for their turn at the helm.
• A more complex arrangement was agreed to make sure that the workload was more evenly spread, to mix big and small countries, to intersperse older and newer member states, and to reflect geographical and economic differences.
• One of the effects of the rotation is to hold the rest of the EU hostage to the different styles, interests and political abilities of the countries in the presidency, and it means a constant change of personnel at the top.
• This is offset to some extent by the use of a trio system, under which each presidency cooperates with its predecessor and successor.

The Councils

• The alternating presidency has the advantage of giving each member state the opportunity to guide the direction of the EU.
• This, in turn, allows member states to convene meetings and launch strategic initiatives on issues of particular national interest, and to try to bring those issues and initiatives to the top of the EU agenda.
• Member states can also use the presidency to earn prestige and credibility, and the office gives smaller member states an opportunity to counter the influence of bigger states.
• The main disadvantage of the job is the sheer volume of work involved.
• The different groups of ministers that make up the Council are known either as 'technical councils', 'formations' or 'configurations', and whichever of these groups is meeting, they always act as 'the Council'.
• There is the General Affairs, which is responsible for ensuring consistency in the work of the different councils to meetings of the European Council, and Foreign Affairs, which is responsible for elaborating on the EU's external relations on the basis of guidance from the European Council.

Supporting structure

• The Council of Ministers has its own supporting bodies that play a critical role in the EU decision-making process.
• Each member state maintains a permanent representation in Brussels, in effect an embassy to the EU that works alongside member state embassies to Belgium, with meetings referred to as the Committee of Permanent Representatives, or Coreper .
• Thanks to Coreper, most of the detailed work of the Council is finished before the ministers even meet, with only the most politically sensitive and controversial proposals left for the ministers to discuss.

Working parties and committees

• In addition to Coreper, the Council of Ministers has a complex network of working parties and committees that support the work of Coreper, and in this sense function as the foundations of the Council edifice.
• The first port of call for a proposal from the Commission is usually a working party, which reviews the technical details and makes a recommendation to Coreper.

General Secretariat

• The Council General Secretariat (CGS) is the bureaucracy of the Council of Ministers and the European Council, staffed by about 3,500 employees based in Brussels, most of them translators and service staff.
• It helps prepare Council meetings, provides advice to the presidency, provides legal support to the Council and Coreper, and briefs Council meetings on the status of agenda items.
• The Secretary General has a five-year term, and also serves as Secretary General of the European Council.
• As of late 2019, the officeholder is Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, a Danish civil servant and formerly permanent representative of Denmark to the EU.
• The office reveals that all occupants have been only men, their terms in office have considerably varied, and they have only come from a small selection of five EU member states.

What the Council does

• The Council has specific responsibilities, including overseeing attempts to coordinate the economic policies of the member states , signing international treaties on behalf of the EU , approving (in conjunction with the EP) the EU budget , promoting the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU , and coordinating cooperation between national courts and police forces on criminal matters.
• Its main job is to decide in conjunction with Parliament : which proposals for new EU laws and policies will be adopted, The European Commission may have a monopoly on proposing new laws and policies, but the Council and Parliament can encourage it to investigate an issue and to submit proposals for new policies or laws.
• When the College of Commissioners has approved a proposal for a new law, it is sent to the European Parliament and to the Council of Ministers, where the proposal goes first to one or more of the Council working parties or committees.

Powers of the Council of Ministers

• Shares powers with the European Parliament for discussing and passing laws.
• Shares powers with Parliament for debating and approving the EU budget.
• Coordinates the public policies of the member states.
• Defines and implements the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Workflow of the Council of Ministers

• The Commission sends a proposal to Council and Parliament.
• The proposal is reviewed by relevant Council working parties or committees.
• Sent to Coreper for discussion by member state representatives.
• Sent to relevant ministerial council.

Voting

• The voting system within the Council has changed over the years, where once unanimity was required for almost every major vote, it is now all but unknown and ministers mainly have three options.
• It can use a simple majority if it is dealing with a procedural issue or working under treaty articles .
• The Council's second voting option is unanimity, needed if the Council was considering a new law that would set off an entirely new policy area or substantially change an existing policy.
• The third option needed on almost every other kind of decision on which ministers have failed to reach a consensus is a qualified majority vote (QMV).
• A qualified majority vote is a system of voting in which the winning block or group needs more than a simple majority and is also sometime known as a 'supermajority'.
• The goal is to ensure that key decisions can only be made with the support of a significant proportion of a population.
• Particular consternation was generated during the debate over the constitutional treaty in 2007 when there was talk about reducing the number of votes given to Poland, which stood at 27 under the terms of the Treaty of Nice.

Luxembourg Compromise of 1966

• Each member state has possessed an implied national veto, and although rarely used, its very existence can be employed as a threat.