The council of the European Union and the European council

The European Council and Council of the European Union (ECC) constitute the executivelegislative core of EU politics. By design, these institutional arenas represent national interests in a networked, club-like model of interstate bargaining. They have also evolved an intricate organizational structure of collective governance across a wide range of sovereignty-sensitive policy areas, from macroeconomic policy to internal security. In most (but not all) policy areas, there is now the possibility of applying the qualified majority voting (QMV) rule;1 however, one of the more remarkable traits of the ECC, is the high proportion of legislative decisions taken by consensus, without recourse to any formal vote at all. Overall, the ECC is an unparalleled international example of what Anne-Marie Slaughter has suggestively termed ‘networks of networks’ (Slaughter 2004: 132). As a system of networked governance, the ECC’s operations now cover an all-inclusive range of public policies involving thousands of national officials at all levels of technical specialization and political seniority. In 2011, this included just under 4,600 official ‘institutional’ meetings (see Table 12.1) with an operating budget of over 500 million euros.