Council Meetings in Europe

Meetings of the Council

Meetings of the Council are convened by its President (the representative of the Member State holding the Presidency of the Council or the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) on his or her own initiative, at the request of one of its members or at the request of the European Commission. The President draws up a provisional agenda for each meeting, consisting of a Part A and a Part B.

Context of Council Meetings in the European Union

The Council only discusses and reaches decisions on documents and drafts which are available in the 23 official languages (Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish). If a matter is urgent, this rule may be dispensed with by unanimous agreement. This also applies to proposals for amendments tabled and discussed in the course of a meeting.

More about Council Meetings in the European Union

Meetings at which the Council discusses or votes on legislative proposals are open to the public. In practice, this means that the meetings are transmitted to rooms with a live audiovisual feed in the Council building.

Other Aspects

It is in the Council that the individual interests of the Member States and the Union interest are balanced. Even though the Member States primarily defend their own interests in the Council, its members are at the same time obliged to take into account the objectives and needs of the Union as a whole. The Council is a Union institution and not an Intergovernmental Conference. Consequently it is not the lowest common denominator between the Member States that is sought in the Council’s deliberations, but rather the right balance between the Union’s and the Member States’ interests.