The continuing significance of the council of the EU presidency for small states : agenda setting or painting-by-numbers

Abstract

While not uncontested, it is an oft-quoted assumption that the Presidency of the Council of the EU gives member states a unique opportunity to influence the EU agenda and to parachute national priorities onto the Brussels’ stage, an assumption which is even more pronounced in the small state literature. This article seeks to test this assumption by undertaking a content analysis of the presidency of two of the Union’s smallest states, namely Cyprus and Malta. Taking these presidencies from 2012 (Cyprus) and 2017 (Malta), we undertake a content analysis which determines which of the items listed in the priorities and programme of each presidency overlap with items listed in Commission, European Council and Parliament documents which predated these presidencies. From this content analysis, we discover that the overriding feature is that the vast bulk of items can be traced to earlier, EU documents and that only a small number of issues appear to be truly unique to either presidency. Based on those unique items, we then undertake a qualitative discussion to assess whether the Presidency still remains, post-Lisbon Treaty, a unique opportunity for placing items on the EU’s agenda which are niche issues, of political or economic importance to the country.