The very last visit of the last day of our RIO- trip was to the building of the European Council in Brussels. Despite the fact that we were all a bit tired (it was the 6th day of our trip), the fact that we would be going home soon made everybody listen attentively to our last speaker- Ms A.M. Colaert.
She appeared to be a very nice, easy-going and quite sincere person. Her speech was not really official, at least to begin with. She told us she was Flemish (though married to a Dutchman), and used to work in the Taxation department at Fortis Bank. However, because she wanted to work in an international environment, in 1996 she managed to get a job at the EC as one of the employees of the Legal Service Department.
Ms Colaert told us about some of the details of her everyday work and made a general sketch of the European Council’s routine. She also explained in a lot of detail how the meetings operate, what the subjects of meetings are and what you could expect from the representative of each Member State. We could see the real documents used during the sessions of the Council.
According to Ms Colaert, the EU is – or would like to be seen as - an efficient, transparent and democratic institution; however, some people have a very different impression. To begin with, most peopleunfortunately do not know the difference between the Council of Europe and the European Council (we did, though, having visited the former during the first day of our trip). The European Council belongs together with the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice as an institution of the European Union. The members of the European Council meet at least twice a year. The Council consists of 25 state representatives at the ministerial level. At present, the presidency in the Council belongs to Austria. The presidency takes 6 months, but the next countries are defined 2 years ahead. A president-country should be neutral, which is why this country is represented twice: once as the Chair of Council, and once as a Member State of the EU.
As Ms. Colaert explained, the Council can do only political, not legal work. The right of legislative initiative belongs solely to the European Commission. The Council can only propose something to the Commission, but cannot force it to come up with a new proposal.
There are 350 people working for the Council, Council members excluded. Ms Colaert concluded by saying that, for most Member States, the level of the EU still belongs to the field of foreign affairs.
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