9:28, 7 April 2010
On a visit to Austria yesterday European Council President Van Rompuy suggested that meetings of the European Council should take place in the Member States.
This would be a return to the past practice of the European Council that was changed by the Member States with the 22nd Declaration attached to the Treaty of Nice which fixed the location of summits in Brussels.
Is the return to the travelling circus of hosting meetings in a country holding the Presidency such a good idea?
The President’s reasoning was that it demonstrates to publics that the EU is not just ‘Brussels’ (although, of course, it is for Van Rompuy as a Belgian…).
The original reasoning behind locating the European Council meetings in Brussels was efficiency and effectiveness. Does this reasoning still hold?
Since all the heads of state and government have to travel anyway for the summits, why not holding them in one of the member states from time to time? Especially if they are kept small and intimate as van Rompuy intends the European Council meetings to be, they can easily be held at appropriate venues in other countries without being inefficient.
And some capitals may even be quicker to reach for many of the politicians than if they travel to Brussels…