European Council

The European Council is the Institution of the European Union (EU) that comprises the heads of state or government of the member states, along with the council's own president and the president of the Commission. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy also takes part in its meetings. Established as an informal summit in 1975, the council was formalised as an Institution in 2009 upon the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. The current president of the European Council is Donald Tusk.

Scope

While the European Council has no formal legislative power, it is a strategic (and crisis-solving) body that provides the union with general political directions and priorities, and acts as a collective presidency. The European Commission remains the sole initiator of legislation, but the European Council is able to provide an impetus to guide legislative policy.

The meetings of the European Council, still commonly referred to as EU summits, are chaired by its president and take place at least twice every six months; usually in the Justus Lipsius building, the headquarters of the Council of the European Union in Brussels. Decisions of the European Council are taken by consensus, except where the Treaties provide otherwise.

List of European Council meetings

This is a list of meetings of the European Council (informally referred to as EU summits); the meetings of the European Council, an institution of the European Union (EU) comprising heads of state or government of EU member states. They started in 1975 as tri-annual meetings. The number of meetings grew to minimum four per year between 1996 and 2007, and minimum six per year since 2008. From 2008 to 2015, an average of seven council meetings per year took place (see list below).

Since 2008, an annual average of two special Euro summits were also organized in addition - and often in parallel - to the EU summits. As the agenda of Euro summits is restricted solely to discuss issues for the eurozone and only invite political leaders of the eurozone member states, such meetings are not counted as European Councils.

List

The first seven summit meetings were held between 1961 and 1974, but this was before the formal establishment of the European Council. Some sources however consider them to be the informal seven first meetings of the European Council.