Presidency of the European Union

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 8 Punkte, Maastricht University, language: English, abstract: When discussing the policy making of the European Union (EU) one has several actors to consider. This paper is going to analyse the role of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and in how far it is possible for the President to influence, structure and guide policy making in the complex institutional setting of the EU. This also leaves room for 'good' and 'bad' presidencies. But what does it mean to have lead a good presidency or a failed one? One major issue that has to be kept in mind is that for the evaluation of a presidency there are so far no common guidelines. One attempt to introduce a method has been done by Schoutt and Vanhoonacker in their paper 'Evaluating Presidencies of the Council of the EU Revisiting' of 2006. In this paper it becomes clear that fulfilling a good presidency depends on several factors and that this cannot be explained through the sheer size of a country.