Although the European Council was established as an informal body of the European Communities in 1961, it was not until the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty that it became an official institution of the EU. The treaty prescribes a guiding role, providing the Union with ‘impetus’ and ‘general political directions and priorities’; the explicit exclusion of any legislative functions seems to demarcate its role clearly from that of the European Commission and its monopoly on the right to initiate legislation. In line with principal-agent theories, the European Council can be conceptualized as the ‘principal’, defining general guidelines and delegating to the Commission—‘the agent’— the power to translate them into legislative proposals. However, the sparse literature on the European Council suggests that the picture is not that clear: the provisions of the Treaty have not withheld the European Council and its members from setting the legislative agenda in a detailed way, often creating tension with the Commission. By looking into three high profile cases (the climate and energy package, the Schengen reform and the reform of the system of economic governance), this paper will assess how and to what extent this tension plays out in practice during the initiation stage of legislation. We argue that the European Council touches quite strongly upon the Commission's prerogatives, but that—in contrast to what principal-agent theory suggests—the Commission often tries to capture the lead back, be it with varying success.
