ABSTRACT
The Council has been called ‘the institutional heart of decision making in the EU’ (Lewis, 2010: 142). Legally speaking, there is only one Council – or Council of Ministers as it is often also referred to – although the ministers responsible for particular policy areas usually meet separately in different Council formations (e.g. the Agriculture Council or the Environment Council). The inaugural Environment Council meeting only took place in 1973 (although the Council had already been set up by the EU’s founding treaties in the 1950s), because the environment was not a salient issue on the EU’s political agenda before the 1970s (see Chapter 2). As will be explained below, the ministerial meetings associated with the Council are only the visible tip of the iceberg of a much larger administrative machine. Importantly, it is the Council (together with the European Parliament) which adopts EU laws (see Chapters 8 and 12).
