THE European Council consists of the 28 heads of state or government of member states. In addition the commission president attends and a European president chairs the EU summits. With the high representative for foreign affairs the latter represents the EU on the international stage.

The Council of Europe, with 47 member states, is not an EU institution. It was founded in 1949 and drew up the European Convention of Human Rights and established the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The European Council considers legislation and policies tabled solely by the commission. The little-known but powerful Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) prepares agenda items and drafts some legislation. There is an even lesser-known General Secretariat led by the secretary-general of the European Council. We shall meet both these powerful arrangements later in the series.

The Council (of ministers from member states) changes according to whichever ministry is being discussed, such as agriculture, fisheries, justice and home affairs.

The EU summits and council meetings are chaired on a rotating six-monthly basis in turn by the ministers from member states. In the second half of 2015 it is Luxembourg and in 2017 it’s Britain, when the referendum on EU membership was originally planned.

The finance ministers meet monthly at a council known as ECOFIN, along with the commissioner for economic and financial affairs and the European Central Bank’s president. They oversee budgets of member states, public-sector finances and thrust to common EU economic development. British budgetary policy has to be approved by ECOFIN. With the European Parliament this council prepares the €100 billion EU budget, largely spent on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The informal and illegal Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers will be dealt with later in the series, along with the Greek situation.

The European Council defines the Common Foreign and Security Policy in conjunction with the Foreign Ministers Council, chaired by the High Representative, which thrash out detail and implement the policy.

If there is not a clear consensus or unanimity these councils of ministers and EU summit meetings resort to complicated qualified majority voting. This includes obtaining a double majority in the number of votes stipulated in the Lisbon Treaty and on size of population. That is 55 per cent of member states or 16 of the 28 Members and 65 per cent of the total EU’s population of 506 million. Britain has 12.6 per cent of the EU population.

This is why David Cameron and George Osborne’s public campaign to change the EU treaties or EU internally are impractical. In addition, if the legislation is not tabled by the commission or High Representative the hurdle is raised to 72 per cent.

Since the EU was changed by the Lisbon Treaty from an intergovernmental arrangement to a superstate, ministers must promote the EU and not national interests. Ministers who attend meetings complain they spend more time in Brussels than their own capitals, but they obviously relish strutting the EU stage and running the EU rather than their own smaller countries.

Member state ministers of all ranks are either appointed by their president, chancellor or prime minister. The majority of governments across the EU are on the right and support the EU. Some governments are repeatedly elected because they benefit from a particular EU policy. For example, French farmers vote in governments who persist in supporting CAP.

We are all EU citizens and subject to all the legislation passed down and decided by the European Council and Council of Ministers in secret. This, with the commission, is where the EU powers are to be found. They are the antithesis of democracy. Governments of member states no longer control their own national affairs and electorates have no say in these councils or EU summits.
 
John Boyd is secretary of the Campaign against Euro-federalism and chairman of the European Alliance of EU critical organisations (Team).