Elucidating representation in the Council of the European Union

The Council of the European Union gathers representatives of the EU member states, who meet and negotiate in many different bodies at several levels, from junior diplomats to ministers. Despite the diversity among the member states, their representatives in the Council prove to be very effective at reaching decisions. Most issues are already decided before reaching the ministers and usually there are either no votes against or very limited opposition. In this paper, I focus on the way member state officials understand representation. Rather that defining the concept of representation "from above", I want to approach it "from below" and ground it in the experience and understandings of national officials who work in the Council’s preparatory bodies. This type of interpretive approach to concepts is called "elucidation" (cf. Schaffer 2015). Empirically, the paper is based on in-depth interviews conducted during my ongoing field research in Brussels. In order to find out what meanings the officials associate with representation, I ask how they perceive their role as representatives, who they think they represent, and if there are any tensions between the aforementioned tendency to reach consensus and their representative duties. In this last aspect, I use practice-oriented framework, looking at both consensus-seeking and representation as social practices, or socially recognisable, patterned, meaningful action which can be performed at varying degrees of competence.