Peter Ludlow and I have shared a passion for the European Council for decades. He watched it from the outside; I experienced it from the inside. We looked at the same events from different angles, but we shared a conviction that the European Council matters enormously.

A few months ago, he asked me whether I would be prepared to take over his job as key chronicler of the European Council. I accepted because I believe his work has been immensely valuable, leaving an authoritative record of the European Council's deliberations and decisions.

Peter leaves formidable shoes to fill. His network, inside knowledge, analytical skills and elegant writing have set a remarkably high standard. It will be tough to replicate his approach. But I can bring something different: a lifetime spent close to, and often inside, the European Council. 

My first close encounter with the European Council came as an Antici between 1988 and 1991, sitting in the room next door to the leaders.  Between 1995 and 1999, as head of cabinet of the Commission President, I was directly involved in European Council meetings and was present in the smoke-filled backrooms where the conclusions were hammered out during the night. And between 2006 and 2020, in the General Secretariat of the Council, I helped prepare and manage the meetings and their conclusions, this time from inside the room. I witnessed first-hand the historic transition from rotating presidencies to the permanent presidency established by the Lisbon Treaty. Working directly for Herman Van Rompuy and Donald Tusk was both an honour and a pleasure.

I learned a great deal over those years. Let me share just three lessons. First, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One may not always be impressed by every individual around the European Council table, yet still be impressed by their collective determination to reach agreement, often against the odds. I have witnessed this repeatedly. It is one of the remarkable features of the European project. Second, two sides can hold diametrically opposed views, and both have a point. Take the famous Polish plumber. The French saw posted workers as unfair competition, and they had a case. The Poles saw the French position as deeply unfair: they had adopted the entire EU acquis to join the Single Market. Why should they now be denied the benefit of their comparative advantage? Both positions were understandable. Finding a compromise is what European politics is about. Third, the EU cannot function without what American political scientists say has broken down in the US, "institutional forbearance". In plain language: mutual respect, tolerance, and the wisdom not to push every legal right to its limits. Without that spirit, a system as complex and diverse as the EU simply cannot function.

Why does all this matter? Because the European Council is unlike any other EU institution. It was born not from a treaty but from a political initiative. In 1974, President Giscard d'Estaing brought the leaders together in Paris and proposed to replace the ad hoc summits that had taken place occasionally before by regular meetings. National leaders wanted a direct say in a Community of growing importance, a forum to discuss foreign and security policy, and a means of providing political leadership at the highest level.
Since then, the European Council has become the central political driving force of European integration. I struggle to think of any major advance in the EU that was not, in one way or another, driven by the European Council. Its conclusions are the principal expression of that leadership, translating political compromises into a common direction. But the European Council does not act alone. What matters is the interplay between institutions and with the Member States.

What makes the European Council so special is both its composition and its dual nature. It brings together national leaders, each with strong democratic legitimacy, alongside the Commission President. It is at once the apex of the EU's institutional system and a club of national leaders. It can discuss any issue, whether it falls squarely within EU competence or not. The European Council is the closest thing the EU has to a collective government.

At a time when Europe faces challenges that increasingly test both its unity and its capacity to act, understanding how the European Council works has rarely been more important.
Peter has spent decades explaining the European Council from the outside, with superb access to insiders. I hope to build on his work by bringing the perspective of someone who has spent much of his professional life on the inside and now wants to make sense of it for the outside world. The ambition remains the same: to explain not just what the European Council decides, but how and why it decides, and what this tells us about the European Union.