The Presidency Effect

From humble beginnings with the merely managerial duties of a formal Chair, the EU Council Presidency has evolved into a crucial player in the context of EU decision making, although its impact remains largely unaddressed in accounts of EU output. More than from its formal job description, the rotating Presidency’s four roles derive from the (informal) decision dyna­mics of the Council as well as the expectations it faces from its domestic audience, public opinion more broadly, its fellow Council members and the other EU institutions. Together, these fac­tors can motivate the member state holding the Presidency to wield every tool at its disposal and even, where necessary, unilaterally sacrifice its own national interest, to achieve agree­ment in the Council. Where the incumbent member state has previously held up such an agreement, this "Presidency effect" (PE) can thus result in changed decision outcomes in the Council. This paper uses “hard case”-evidence to test the PE predictions about member state behavior and its consequences for overall decision outcomes.