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The European Council – II part
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The constitutional Treaty has brought some important modifications to the structure of the European Council. The first one is the appointment of a permanent President of the European Council. This means that a President is chosen by the Heads of State and Government and he will become a permanent figure, contrarily to what happens today, where the President of the European Union rotates every six months. But thanks to the new constitution, we’ll have a permanent President of the European Union, that is a President that is going to be appointed for 2 years and a half and that can be renewed. The President’s function is to represent the Union with third parties, to ensure the coordination of the European Council and to encourage its work, in order to facilitate the achievement of a public assent. What’s new with that? There have been many concerns, for example, we have thought that the President of the Council would become an alternative body to the President of the Commission, that a dichotomy would be created within the European Union. No, that’s not true. To tell the truth, the relationship between Commission/Council is created through a more oriented and stable structure, following certain appropriate rules. The relationship becomes organic and not casual and above all, it does not rely on political drives anymore. As you know, up to now, the European Council has met in different capitals: Rome, Milan, London, Athens, according to the various six-month presidencies of each country. The Treaty of Nice established that all the Council’s meetings must be held in Brussels and in fact, starting from that date on, Brussels has become the seat of the European Council and it is there that the Heads of State and Government meet. The latter give the European Council a veneer of routine, since they act like a sort of Cabinet that meets in the different capitals to take the decisions that are important for the Union. Among the other things, the constitution establishes that 2 different European Councils must take place on a six-month rotation, that is, 4 European Councils per year. The General Secretariat supports and helps the President of the European Council to prepare the decisions that have to be taken by the colleagues participating in this important institution. Thanks to the innovations introduced by the constitutional treaty, the European Council takes the look of a stable institution. Which are the tasks of the European Council? To summarise: it can serve as a political stance body; it can act in particularly sensitive matters that question the sovereignty of member states, such as foreign and security policy, defence policy and the policy concerning the collaboration for justice and home affairs. The European Council gives its guidelines in all these fields. But it has also some decision-making tasks. For example, it can appoint the President of the Commission by qualified majority voting. The Council also establishes when a nation has persistently violated the Treaties and is therefore subject to the relative sanctions; besides, the Council can take a decision- even if informally, on all the other issues that the sectorial councils have left unsolved and for which they have asked for the higher will of their own Heads of State and Government in order to solve a certain issue. However, I would not like to suggest that the European Council is an autocratic body, that decides on everything and that imposes its decisions within the European Union, since we must consider the fact that the institutional balance persists. So on the one hand, we have the proposal of the Commission and on the other hand we have the co-decision of the European Parliament. These are the elements that ensure balance and functionality to the European Union, in order to make it progress in the best way as possible.
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