ABSTRACT
For decades the Council presidency was conceived as an institutional mechanism of member states’ representation within the European polity. Unlike the presidency of the Commission, whose profile was of a supranational nature, the Council presidency was conceptualized as a national performance endowed with an intergovernmental mission. Two functional principles, rotation and symmetry, which were the expression of political criteria such as representation and equality, reflected member states’ willingness to guarantee an instrument for extraordinary representation within the Council, while at the same time counterbalancing the supranational dynamic embodied by the Commission. Since the late 1990s, however, a wind of change has blown over the model as well as over the institutional position of the presidency within the European political system. Indeed, the successive waves of reform that affected the Council over the last decade involved the replacement of a unique rotating system with a conglomerate of presidential systems that operate in parallel and are governed by different functional criteria. Unlike the initial model, which was of a markedly national nature, the current model partially collectivizes and supranationalizes the exercise of the presidency by introducing significant innovations such as stable, team and super partes presidencies.
