The British Presidency of the EU

This page gives background information on the British Presidency of the EU.

What is it?

The Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the European Council rotates every six months between countries within the European Union, which means organising meetings, hosting EU summits and taking a lead on EU policies.

Current schedule

2005 1 January – 30 June: Luxembourg
2005 1 July – 31 December:  UK

The Government is preparing a series of events across the UK, co-coordinating policy themes and legislative objectives, as well as overseeing joint policy work with the European Commission. The UK will take charge of the Council agenda and chair all meetings for the six month period, promoting legislative and political decisions and brokering agreements between the member countries.  As an official from the Cabinet Office’s European Secretariat explained at a recent meeting of local government European officers, “for a Presidency to be judged successful it must be impartial.”

Council of Ministers 

There will be a series of Council of Ministers meetings held across the country:

• Jobs Council, Belfast, 7-8 July
• Informal Competitiveness meeting, Cardiff, 11-12 July
• Education meeting, London QEII conference centre, 12-13 July
• Foreign Affairs Summit, Newport, Wales, 1-2 September
• Justice and Home Affairs Council, Newcastle and Gateshead, 8-9 September
• Agricultural Ministerial meeting, venue TBC, 9-12 September
• Treasury Economics meeting, venue TBC, 10-12 September
• Sport meeting, Liverpool, 19-22 September
• Health ministerial meeting, Hertfordshire, 21 October
  International
• Development meeting, Leeds, 25-26 October
• Equality Ministerial meeting, Birmingham ICC, 7-9 November
• Environment and the Regions meeting, Bristol TBC, 1st December

The Birmingham conference will provide an ideal opportunity to showcase some of the excellent work done locally on equality projects, and will link in proposals for reform by taking forward key conclusions of the Lisbon Mid Term Review.  This review includes a concrete action programme that focuses on making Europe a more attractive place to invest and work, Knowledge and innovation for growth and creating more and better jobs.

Themes

The themes of this British Presidency are largely an inherited agenda from the previous (Luxemburg) Presidency, with policies drawn from a three-year strategic European plan to ensure continuity.  In particular, the British Presidency will seek to make progress in the following areas:

1. Fostering enterprise and innovation in Europe: Driving forwards the updating of regulations which intend to improve the quality of the European Commission ‘s impact assessments and to simplify existing European law.  There is also a move to further protect intellectual property rights through a suitable framework;
2. Creating a more dynamic Single Market: Working to achieve progress on a single market in services; and towards a future strategy on financial services which focuses more on implementation and enforcement of alternative European law such as pro-active competition policy, promoting excellence in research and development, and making markets work for consumers, through a stronger Council meeting specifically on Competitiveness;
3. Promoting high employment across Europe: Encouraging further action by European countries to develop and deliver active Labour market strategies to help the unemployed find work and policies to raise skills levels and improve flexibility among the workforce;
4. Creating a more outward looking Europe:  Encouraging the European Union to show leadership on fairer trade to work towards an ambitious and pro-poor agreement in the Doha Development Agenda World Trade Organisation negotiations; and strengthening bilateral economic relations, particularly with the US, through a new EU-US economic cooperation partnership; and
5. Encouraging Europe to play a leadership role in meeting global challenges: Increasing resources to help meeting the Millennium Development Goals; tackling climate change, and ensuring shorter lead times between developing and deploying new environmental technologies.