Summary of Presidency response to CIG 9/03
The Commission is in favour of a system of Council formations where each formation is responsible for both legislative and non-legislative work within its area of responsibility. The work of the Council formations should be cleary structured to ensure that the legislative/public work of the Council is cleary separated from other agenda items. All Council discussions on legislation should be public. According to the Commission, it would be most appropriate to leave the decision on the number of Council formations to the General Affairs Council, not to the European Council.
As far as the Presidency of the Council is concerned, the Commission favours a system where the presidents of all formations, apart from the Foreign Affairs Council, are elected for one year by the members of the Council concerned. The Commission therefore sees no need for team presidencies, a system that would only increase the Union's complexity. In the system proposed by the Commission, the administrative support for each formation would be provided, as now, by the Council Secretariat and the General Affairs Council would be responsible for ensuring consistency. The GAC has a much more stable composition than that which a team presidency system would provide, representing all the member states as well as the Commission.