Editing European Council (section)

==History==
{{further|List of European Council meetings}}
The European Council officially gained the status of an EU institution after the [[Treaty of Lisbon]] in 2007, distinct from the [[Council of the European Union]] (Council of Ministers). Before that, the first summits of EU heads of state or government were held in February and July 1961 (in Paris and [[Bonn]] respectively). They were informal summits of the leaders of the [[European Community]], and were started due to then-[[President of France|French President]] [[Charles de Gaulle]]'s resentment at the domination of supranational institutions (notably the [[European Commission]]) over the integration process, but petered out. The first influential summit held, after the departure of de Gaulle, was the [[The Hague|Hague]] summit of 1969, which reached an agreement on the admittance of the United Kingdom into the Community and initiated foreign policy cooperation (the [[European Political Cooperation]]) taking integration beyond economics.<ref name="seeToL" /><ref name="Dragoman">{{cite web |last=Stark |first=Christine |title=Evolution of the European Council: The implications of a permanent seat |publisher=Dragoman.org |url=http://www.dragoman.org/ec/belfast-2002.pdf |access-date=12 July 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070709220601/http://www.dragoman.org/ec/belfast-2002.pdf |archive-date=9 July 2007}}</ref>

[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F075760-0010, Brüssel, Sitzung des Europarates.jpg|thumb|left|300px|A traditional group photo, here taken at the [[Royal Palace of Brussels|royal palace in Brussels]] during Belgium's [[Presidency of the Council of the European Union|1987 presidency of the Council of the European Union]]]]

The summits were only formalised in the period between 1974 and 1988. At the December summit in Paris in 1974, following a proposal from then-French president [[Valéry Giscard d'Estaing]], it was agreed that more high-level, political input was needed following the "empty chair crisis" and economic problems.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Imbrogno |first=Anthony F. |title=The founding of the European Council: economic reform and the mechanism of continuous negotiation |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2016.1188925 |journal=Journal of European Integration |volume=38 |issue=6 |pages=719–736 |date=18 September 2016 |via=Taylor and Francis+NEJM |s2cid=156950352 |doi=10.1080/07036337.2016.1188925}}</ref> The inaugural ''European Council'', as it became known, was held in [[Dublin]] on 10 and 11 March 1975 during Ireland's first Presidency of the [[Council of the European Union|Council of Ministers]]. In 1987, it was included in the treaties for the first time (the [[Single European Act]]) and had a defined role for the first time in the [[Maastricht Treaty]]. At first only a minimum of two meetings per year were required, which resulted in an average of three meetings per year being held for the 1975–1995 period. Since 1996, the number of meetings were required to be minimum four per year. For the latest 2008–2014 period, this minimum was well exceeded, by an average of seven meetings being held per year. The [[#Seat|seat of the Council]] was formalised in 2002, basing it in Brussels. Three types of European Councils exist: Informal, Scheduled and Extraordinary. While the informal meetings are also scheduled 1½ years in advance, they differ from the scheduled ordinary meetings by not ending with official ''Council conclusions'', as they instead end by more broad political ''Statements'' on some cherry-picked policy matters. The extraordinary meetings always end with official ''Council conclusions'' but differ from the scheduled meetings by not being scheduled more than a year in advance, as for example in 2001 when the European Council gathered to lead the European Union's response to the [[11 September attacks]].<ref name="seeToL"/><ref name="Dragoman"/>

Some meetings of the European Council—and, before the European Council was formalised, meetings of the heads of government—are seen by some as turning points in the [[history of the European Union]]. For example:<ref name="seeToL"/>
* 1969, ''[[The Hague]]'': Foreign policy and enlargement.
* 1974, ''Paris'': Creation of the council.
* 1985, ''[[Milan]]'': Initiate [[Intergovernmental Conference|IGC]] leading to the [[Single European Act]].
[[File:1991, persconferentie Eurotop, MECC Maastricht.jpg|thumb|300px|Press conference with European Commissioner [[Jacques Delors]] and Dutch ministers [[Wim Kok]], [[Hans van den Broek]] and [[Ruud Lubbers]], after the European Council of 9–10 December 1991 in Maastricht, which led to the [[Maastricht Treaty]] (1992)]]
* 1991, ''[[Maastricht]]'': Agreement on the [[Maastricht Treaty]].
* 1992, ''[[Edinburgh]]'': Agreement (by treaty provision) to retain at [[Strasbourg]] the plenary seat of the [[European Parliament]].
* 1993, ''[[Copenhagen]]'': Leading to the definition of the [[Copenhagen Criteria]].
* 1997, ''[[Amsterdam]]'': Agreement on the [[Amsterdam Treaty]].
* 1998, ''[[Brussels]]'': Selected member states to adopt the euro.
* 1999; ''[[Cologne]]'': [[List of European Councils#Cologne 1999|Declaration on military forces]].<ref name="Cologne ESDP">{{cite web|title=EU Security Policy & the role of the European Commission|publisher=[[Europa (web portal)|European Commission]]|url=http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/cfsp/esdp/chrono.htm|access-date=22 August 2007|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071022213724/http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/cfsp/esdp/chrono.htm |archive-date = 22 October 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* 1999, ''[[Tampere]]'': Institutional reform
* 2000, ''[[Lisbon]]'': [[Lisbon Strategy]]
* 2002, ''[[Copenhagen]]'': Agreement for May 2004 [[Enlargement of the European Union|enlargement]].
* 2007, ''[[Lisbon]]'': Agreement on the [[Lisbon Treaty]].
* 2009, ''Brussels'': Appointment of first president and merged High Representative.
* 2010, [[European Financial Stability Facility]]

As such, the European Council had already existed before it gained the status as an [[institution of the European Union]] with the entering into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, but even after it had been mentioned in the treaties (since the Single European Act) it could only take political decisions, not formal legal acts. However, when necessary, the Heads of State or Government could also meet as the [[Council of the European Union|Council of Ministers]] and take formal decisions in that role. Sometimes, this was even compulsory, e.g. Article 214(2) of the [[Treaty establishing the European Community]] provided (before it was amended by the [[Treaty of Lisbon]]) that '[[Council of the European Union|the Council]], meeting ''in the composition of Heads of State or Government'' and acting by a qualified majority, shall nominate the person it intends to appoint as President of the [[European Commission|Commission]]' (emphasis added); the same rule applied in some monetary policy provisions introduced by the [[Maastricht Treaty]] (e.g. Article 109j TEC). In that case, what was politically part of a European Council meeting was legally a meeting of the [[Council of the European Union|Council of Ministers]]. When the European Council, already introduced into the treaties by the Single European Act, became an institution by virtue of the Treaty of Lisbon, this was no longer necessary, and the "Council [of the European Union] meeting in the composition of the Heads of State or Government", was replaced in these instances by the European Council now taking formal legally binding decisions in these cases ([[:s:Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union/Title III: Provisions on the Institutions#Article 15|Article 15 of the Treaty on European Union]]).<ref>[[s:Treaty of Lisbon/Article 2 - Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union|Wikisource: Article 2(3)(e), Treaty of Lisbon]]</ref>

The Treaty of Lisbon made the European Council a formal institution distinct from the (ordinary) Council of the EU, and created the present longer term and full-time presidency. As an outgrowth of the Council of the EU, the European Council had previously followed the same Presidency, rotating between each member state. While the Council of the EU retains that system, the European Council established, with no change in powers, a system of appointing an individual (without them being a national leader) for a two-and-a-half-year term—which can be renewed for the same person only once.<ref name="Constitution info">{{cite web|title=The Union's institutions: The European Council|publisher=[[Europa (web portal)]]|date=21 February 2001|url=http://europa.eu/scadplus/constitution/europeancouncil_en.htm|access-date=12 July 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091221041824/http://europa.eu/scadplus/constitution/europeancouncil_en.htm|archive-date=21 December 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref> Following the ratification of the treaty in December 2009, the European Council elected the then-[[Prime Minister of Belgium]] [[Herman Van Rompuy]] as its first permanent president; he resigned the prime ministerial position.<ref name="consensus">{{cite news |title=Belgian PM Van Rompuy is named as new EU president |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8367589.stm |publisher=BBC News |date=20 November 2009 |access-date=20 November 2009}}</ref>