The design of the future EU Council Presidency is deemed to create confusion among European citizens. The forthcoming IGC can still do better without reopening the fundamentals of the new blueprint. Clarifying the notion of "EU presidency" could help safeguard the EU's founding principle of shared leadership, argue Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College Oxford Kalypso Nicolaïdis, and Simone Bunse, Assistant Professor of Politics at the INCAE Business School. (See also Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

"Rotation is dead: Long live rotation!"

We believe that the IGC can still do better without reopening the fundamentals of this new blueprint. We need to address both demands for more permanence and fears of concentration of power. We can - by presenting or labelling the current arrangements for rotation as the rotating presidency of the EU, a presidency for the EU as a whole that would put rotation not only below but also symbolically above the European Council. At the same time, as envisaged in the current Reform Treaty, the European Council would get its permanent chair and the EU would acquire its High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Hence, the essentials of the existing bargain are left untouched.

The design of the future EU Council Presidency is deemed to create confusion among European citizens. The forthcoming IGC can still do better without reopening the fundamentals of the new blueprint. Clarifying the notion of "EU presidency" could help safeguard the EU's founding principle of shared leadership, argue Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College Oxford Kalypso Nicolaïdis, and Simone Bunse, Assistant Professor of Politics at the INCAE Business School. (See also Part 1)

Before presenting a simple remedy to this problem, it is worth recalling how it came about - and why the reform treaty does well to retain a rotating presidency for the many configurations of the councils of ministers.

The design of the future EU Council Presidency is deemed to create confusion among European citizens. The forthcoming IGC can still do better without reopening the fundamentals of the new blueprint. Clarifying the notion of "EU presidency" could help safeguard the EU's founding principle of shared leadership, argue Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College Oxford Kalypso Nicolaïdis, and Simone Bunse, Assistant Professor of Politics at the INCAE Business School.

Two years after the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by the French and Dutch referenda, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Everything looks set for a deal on the new ‘reform treaty' by the October 18-19 Summit - in time for the ratification process to conclude ahead of the 2009 EP elections. The draft text to be agreed by the IGC is already available on the web and no-one seems to want to reopen any of its clauses, for risk of seeing the whole enterprise unravel. Even Poland has fallen in line on the Council's new voting system.