The political constitution of the EU Revisiting the law and practice of council decision-making

Understanding decision-making in the Council of the European Union is fundamental to understanding the State of affairs of EU integration, to understanding the State of the Union and of its constitution. Since several decades, the deliberations and votes in the Council on EU laws are made public. This has led to valuable political science research about how Member States negotiate and decide in the Council. Still, several aspects of the decision-making process remain overlooked.
This inaugural lecture discusses three elements of the political constitution of Council decision-making to illustrate that there is still a structural lack of awareness and understanding, among academies and practitioners, of aspects of the decision-making methods that are often being applied. These are: consensus as a decision-making method of the Council; striving for consensus as a complex element of Council decision-making; and the phenomenon of the Council General Approach.
A legal constitution communicates to the public and to the actors involved. It communicates about the basic applicable rules it does not, others should, including academies. This is not only important from a descriptive perspective, in other words, to get the picture - of what happens on the constitutional ground - right. It is also important from a normative perspective. Decision-making, in bath law and fact, is relevant for assessing issues such as legitimacy, accountability, transparency, and checks and balances.