What's left of the rotating presidency?

The rotating presidency has been at the core of the European Union’s (EU) institutional design ever since its foundation. Rotation ensured non-hierarchical, decentralized leadership of the Council and avoided the emergence of a single power centre. The result of a sensitive bargain between small and big states, the rotating Council presidency was left intact over successive treaty changes. However, when reform fever took over the European project for most of the last decade, the issue of the rotating presidency dominated the headlines. The draft constitution and its reincarnation in the guise of the Lisbon Treaty entailed the most fundamental changes to the office to date. This chapter analyses the presidency reforms and the extent to which they have affected its leadership potential. Leadership is defined here as an ‘asymmetrical relationship of influence in which one actor guides or directs the behaviour of others towards a certain goal over a certain period of time’. ¹ Influence, in turn, is understood pragmatically as the capacity to change an outcome from what it otherwise would have been in the absence of action. ² In the context of the agenda-setting power of the presidency, this includes the ability to initiate new policies, but also to structure and limit policy choices. ³