Orban is not taking over the 'EU Presidency'

Every six months the Council of the EU's rotating presidency causes confusion among the public, thanks to leaders like Macron who like to pretend they have suddenly become President of Europe.

Last week, the Hungarian government held a press conference in Brussels unveiling the logo and motto for when they take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in one week. In what was clearly meant as an attention-grabbing stunt, they adopted the motto, “Make Europe Great Again”. The barely altered borrowing from the slogan of Donald Trump, who Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban so feverishly admires, got them the attention they were seeking. Twitter was abuzz. Not only was Viktor Orban apparently becoming ‘President of the EU’ for the next six months, but he was altering the EU’s official motto!

The reality is that prime ministers actually have no formal role in the rotating presidencies. Every six month a new country takes over setting the agenda for and chairing meetings of the Council of the EU, the upper chamber of the EU’s legislature commonly referred to as the “Council of Ministers”. This presidency only concerns one part of EU lawmaking. It has no role in the European Council of 27 national leaders, which has a person serving as president for five-year terms (currently Charles Michel). Nor does it have a role in the European Commission, which proposes EU legislation. And of course, it has no role in the European Parliament, the directly-elected lower house of the EU’s legislature. The government holding the rotating presidency simply designs the agendas for the Council meetings of 27 ministers in their various formats (environment ministers, finance ministers, etc) - with one big exception. The highly-sensitive meetings of the 27 EU foreign ministers are chaired by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs, a person who also serves a five year term.

This presidency could be said to be something like the Speaker of the House in the United States. The ability to call votes (or not) and to chair meetings is significant, but in no way is the speaker “running the United States”. So why does the EU have this peculiar rotating presidency for one of its institutions, and why are so many people under the impression that the rotating presidency is “running the European Union”?

The reasons lie in the origins of this tradition. When the first iteration of the Council was created within the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, it’s only role was to supervise the European Commission and thus the work involved was minimal. It was decided that the job of chairing the Council would rotate every six months among the ECSC’s six members. This continued even as it grew to be the European Community and, in 1992, the European Union. Throughout all these decades the Council was one body, both for configurations of ministers and of prime ministers.

However the lack of coordination between each successive six-month presidency was hindering the development of long-term priorities for the EU. And so as part of the constitutional convention of the early 2000s, it was decided to split the institution into the Council of the EU (for ministers) and the European Council (the summits of 27 prime ministers and presidents). The new five-year-term position of European Council President was created, and the first president Herman van Rompuy was appointed in 2009. But they decided to maintain the rotating presidency held by governments for the Council of Ministers.

This is an important distinction, because while the European Council has some executive powers, the Council of Ministers does not. The latter is a purely legislative body. Although the executive branch of the EU is the European Commission, the European Council of 27 national leaders issues instructions to the Commission and sets out the high-level vision for the union, so it can be said to also possess executive powers although it cannot propose legislation.

It therefor makes no sense to say that “Hungary is running the EU for the next six months”, just like it didn’t make any sense when Macron’s government was claiming this for France back in 2022. The rotating presidency has no executive power. It can only set priorities which it would like to highlight during meetings of the Council of Ministers. In no way does it set the strategic vision for the union, and it is not involved in any way in the EU’s foreign policy decisions.

France presenting this as the “EU Presidency” was really bothering me in 2022 because, aside from just being inaccurate, it sets up a problem for when you have an anti-EU government holding the presidency. The year before the French presidency, EU officials were telling us to ignore the antics of Slovenian Prime Minister (and Orban ally) Janez Jansa while that country had the presidency. But suddenly, when it’s a country led by a Europhile president, we were all supposed to listen very carefully to Macron’s grandiose plans. The French presidency’s absurdly ambitious vision prompted one journalist to ask after Macron’s lengthy speech presenting it, “Are you aware that this presidency is six months, not six years?

My general feeling is that the rotating presidency causes more confusion than it’s worth. But when I talk to people in the EU bubble about it I find I’m usually in the minority, and people like the way the presidency brings the EU out to the people around the union. I suppose I don’t have any bright idea for something that could replace it. Someone has to chair the Council of Ministers meetings, and I’m not sure it would make sense to be appointing permanent five-year-term chairs for each Council configuration.

However, at the very least, we really need to come up with a different word for this in English. Just like with the “president” of the European Council and the “president” of the European Parliament, we are borrowing terminology from French that has a different meaning in English. In French a president is, in addition to being an executive position, also someone who simply “presides” over a meeting. So for the French, when they hear the term “president of the European Parliament”, they don’t automatically assume that person has executive authority. But in English, someone who chairs a meeting is never referred to as a president. They are a Chairman, and in the case of a parliament, they are a Speaker. I know we also use this for international bodies such as the rotating presidency of the G7, but I think in that context it’s clear to everyone that this country isn’t actually running the G7. But since the way the EU works is unknown to most people, it doesn’t seem to be clear in this case.

So to stop the confusion among the public that either Macron or Orban is taking over the EU for six months at the time, may I humbly request that we start referring to this as the Rotating Chairmanship of the Council of Ministers? I know the word ‘man’ in there is problematic, especially given this isn’t a person but rather a government, but I can’t think of a good alternative. I’m all ears if someone has a better suggestion!