Setting the EU’s agenda in time of crises: A new perspective on European Council and European Commission relations in the post-Lisbon era

Much of the academic debate on agenda setting in the EU has focused on the extent to which the European Council has displaced the European Commission as the EU’s supreme agenda-setter in the post-Maastricht era. We argue that this view rests on a mistaken conception of the terms of interaction between the two institutions, an exaggeration of the formal powers and organisational capacities of the European Council, and a misunderstanding of the role of the European Commission’s position as defined under the treaties and in practice. To demonstrate our claims, we examine how the EU’s routine policy agenda has been set since Lisbon. Drawing on the analysis of the Commission’s Annual Work Programme and European Council’s Strategic Agenda, systematic coding of European Council Conclusions as well as selected top-level interviews, we assess efforts on the part of the European Council to influence the direction of policy and preeminent role of the Commission, in particular its Presidents, in defining the terms of the debate on the EU’s strategic priorities. The paper argues for an alternative conception of the relations between these institutions attentive to the system of enhanced inter-institutional choreography and which considers the wider factors that shape their relationship.