The European Commission and the European Council: Setting the EU’s Agenda in the Post-Lisbon Era

There is a growing consensus that the European Commission’s role as the main agenda setter of the European Union has been weakened by the rise of the European Council, which has emerged through Lisbon Treaty changes and EU crises as the ‘new centre of gravity’ of the Union. This paper challenges and qualifies this narrative. We argue that in the EU’s under-constitutionalised order, there is considerable scope for contingency, and institutional improvisation. The relationship between the two institutions – which have both experienced processes of presidentialisation – has varied depending on the role conceptions and practices of their respective Presidents. We demonstrate these claims by comparing the first and second post-Lisbon quinquenniums based on an original set of top-level interviews and four salient case studies – Eurozone reform; the EU response to the migration crisis; Brexit negotiations; and the definition of the EU’s future agenda.