Wessels, Wolfgang --- "The European Council: A Bigger Club, a Similar Role?" [2008] ELECD 269; in Best, Edward; Christiansen, Thomas; Settembri, Pierpaolo (eds), "The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union

Editor(s): Best, Edward; Christiansen, Thomas; Settembri, Pierpaolo

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847203458

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: The European Council: A Bigger Club, a Similar Role?

Author(s): Wessels, Wolfgang

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

2. The European Council: a bigger
club, a similar role?
Wolfgang Wessels

It seems not inappropriate to start any assessment of the institutional
impact of enlargement at the top, by looking at the European Council, the
body bringing together the heads of state or government of the member
states with the President of the European Commission at the political apex
of the European Union. No other body has shaped the fundamental devel-
opments of the European construction as profoundly as this institutional-
ized summitry (cf. de Schoutheete 2006, p. 57; Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace
2006, p. 173).
Not an organ of the European Community, this elite `club' has its legal
basis in the Treaty on European Union. According to the treaty formula-
tion, `the European Council shall provide the European Union with the
necessary impetus for its development and shall define the general polit-
ical guidelines thereof' (Art. 4 TEU). This general and ambiguous
description, however, fails to fully recognize the body's political relevance in
constructing and running the EU system. It has been called a `provi-
sional government' (`gouvernement provisoire') (Monnet 1976, p. 598), a
`joint decision centre' (Tindemans 1975), `constitutional architect'
(Wessels 2005b, p. 55), a `system of collective leadership' (Ludlow
2005, p. 3) and the `high guardian' (`haute tutelle') (Louis and Ronse
2005, p. 57). It has also been described as not an `institution', but a
`locus of power' (de Schoutheete 2006, p. 45). The formulations of its
role in the Constitutional Treaty and the subsequent ...