From ‘European Community Summit’ to ‘European Council’: The Development and Role of Summitry in the European Union

Abstract

Summitry has a somewhat controversial history in the European Union (EU) because it is a clear manifestation of intergovernmental cooperation which was anathema to the (federalist) founding fathers of the EU. Its early history is particularly ‘tainted’ in this way. Summitry was the favoured method of cooperation of de Gaulle and, indeed, he was the instigator of the first two EU summits, in Paris in February 1961, and then in Bonn in July 1961. However, these summits were principally geared towards preparing the ground for the ‘Fouchet Plan’,¹ a French initiative named after the French ambassador to Denmark who chaired the committee which produced it in late 1961. It is perhaps not entirely unfair to characterize this as a Gaullist attempt to hijack the fledgling European Union and reinvent it on a firmly intergovernmental basis. The Fouchet Plan sought to institutionalize EU summits and create a permanent secretariat and intergovernmental committees in key areas. It was not well received outside France and was not taken up in the EU. However, de Gaulle’s antagonism to supranationality continued and was to culminate in the 1965 crisis and the paralysis of the (then) European Community.