The Presidency of the European Council rotates between the member states who hold it for 6 months at a time. The UK was due to hold the Presidency in the second half of 2017.
Some people expected David Cameron’s pledge to hold an EU Referendum “by the end of 2017” indicated he planned to use the Presidency in a way that would then springboard him into a successful campaign.
He called it early and lost. Now it appears there will be no UK Presidency in 2017. The Independent reports it has been cancelled and the slot will be taken by another member state.
The Presidency of the Council involves chairing it and setting its agenda. We will never know how the 2017 Presidency could have been used by Theresa May to benefit the UK and the European Union as a whole.
Slovakia currently hold the Presidency and the website for their tenure is here, explaining their programme and priorities.
2017 is going to be an important year for Europe, with national elections is both German and France. The loss of the 2017 Presidency is a specific and significant loss of influence for the UK as a direct result of the unfortunate result on 23 June.
* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party's representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Is it me, or is British politics missing a Conservative Party?
The very lost tunnels of the Hereford and Gloucester Canal
Do those "Winning Here" posters and bar charts really actually work?
Are some premature births caused by a average lower mitochondrial membrane potential in the baby?
Black History Month
Katharine Pindar
Ian Patterson
nvelope2003
David Warren
Peter Martin
28 Comments
Stripped ? I was under the impression the Government had given it up. Don’t let’s start getting a St Sebastian complex.
and the Electoral Reform Bill was defeated today in the Commons by 81 -74.
After the vote Labour MPs flooded in for the next business. Tories confuse PR with AV.
Can’t tell if the title and thrust of this article is just an error or deliberate misinformation, as it is clearly reported that May gave up the position herself.
May “gave it up” is a laughable face-saving piece of spin for her and Donald Tusks’ convenience.
She jumped before she was pushed, or rather jumped before she was ignored on the world stage.
There is no way anything she had to say as President would have been respected by the rest of the Council.
Boris Johnson’s cringe-worthy press conference yesterday is a taste if things to come until we are rid of this government.
Nevertheless, Anthony, it’s absolutely clear that the UK hasn’t been “stripped” of anything – obviously it would have been rather pointless for it to run the presidency whilst negotiating to leave, but just because a decision is obviously right doesn’t mean it’s been forced on you. The language used in the headline (I don’t know whether yours or added by an LDV editor) gives a very misleading impression of the process.
That may well be your interpretation Antony and it may well be right but have you got anything to back it up? I too was of the understanding that May had voluntarily surrendered it. If that’s what is commonly understood, saying something that runs contrary to it and diminishes the current government needs some substance or just comes across as purposefully spreading misinformation.
It’s fairly clear from the reporting that the UK was forced to step down by pretty well everyone else. Whether or not Mrs May would have liked to keep the Presidency is something we may have to wait some time to find out.
@ Antony Hook defending………Not the most convincing plea in mitigation.
Nothing has been surrendered or relinquished!
It is clear from the government press release ( https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-phone-call-with-the-president-of-the-european-council-19-july-2016 ) that if the UK commences exit negotiations next year, it would relinquish the Presidency.
Personally, I see UK’s presidency both as a negotiating card and as an opportunity to introduce a few reforms that could benefit those EU members who aren’t fully committed to the idea of a European superstate. But then given our recent history, common sense and logic are in very short supply among the Westminster crowd…
“There is no way anything she had to say as President would have been respected by the rest of the Council.”
She clearly knew this – so she must have consented to the process of withdrawing from the role. Or are you saying that she intended to go forward with the Presidency?
‘Stripped’ implies ‘removed without consent’. Clearly, there was mutual consent. So your headline is wrong.
It pains me to defend a PM who has today been gratuitously rude towards our party leader, and is actively pursuing all manner of things – even ignoring Brexit – that I actively dislike. But you’re still wrong, unless you can prove Tory intent to retain the role.
The UK has been stripped of this opportunity for influence.
I do not believe for a second that May consented. She gave all the consent of Captain Bligh stepping from HMS Bounty into the lifeboat at the crew’s “request”.
If I am wrong about that then the UK has been stripped of it by her own decision and it is a very bad decision by a weak Prime Minister.
What authority did she have to do that? When was Parliament consulted? When was this announced to the public so people could have their say and make their views known?
It is the absence of such consultation or announcement that is, in my mind, the most compelling sign that “consent” is a load of spin
Stripped of the Presidency by Europe or stripped of the Presidency by our own PM. It’s a bad day for our country.
Well, Anthony, at least I agree it’s a bad day for the country. When I think about what opportunities this year could have offered for the UK to push for further meaningful EU reform (although I doubt the Tories would have managed it) and take the lead on some of the crucial issues that face the whole union… no question, it’s a tragically missed opportunity that should make us question what our government and (some of) our people are wilfully throwing away.
But I don’t see that any halfway sane minister or civil servant – in a post-UK-secession world, having accepted that as a settled decision for UK strategy – could have done anything else. Keeping the presidency without a U-turn on the referendum result would have been a car-crash and a distraction for pretty much any PM.
As to a debate in parliament on the issue … well, yes, good point, we could have used the time wasted on the Trident vote. Clearly the government is ‘winging it’ to a ridiculous degree, and how long May will be able to blame Cameron for lack of forethought, is limited.
Well clearly we weren’t stripped of anything if it was our Government that gave it up. On May’s timetable we’ll have issued the Article 50 notification by then anyway. So inappropriate that we should hold the Presidency when, if agreement is quick and easy we might not even be members by the end of 2017. If we held out it would cause major resentment amongst the other states and we do want them on our side should we want to rejoin. So May did the right thing. Her authority is the leadership of a majority Government, I’m not aware of any need to consult, and “the People” don’t give a flying fig… a majority of those with an opinion want us out of the EU not hamming it up in the Presidency role.
Can we stop trying to spin stories into something they’re not please. Honesty and integrity are our bywords
So, Article 50 or no Article 50, a Leave vote has real consequences. Oh, if only someone had warned us!
My understanding also was that the UK government voluntarily relinquished the 2017 EU presidency which makes absolute sense as we are leaving the EU. Pushed before we were shoved (or ‘stripped’ of the role)? More likely a pragmatic, diplomatic decision by Theresa May so why ‘spin’ it into anything else?
From the tone of the article and his comments, I get the distinct impression that Antony Hook actually supports Leave!
Because the blatant misrepresentative spin he has applied to the know facts is in the same class as that used by the anti-EU media for many decades to cast the EU in a negative light and support their “UK out” campaign. Hence the obvious conclusion is that he is wanting to maintain this misleading impression as further justification for Leave.
Unfortunately, I expect over the coming months and years we will see much of the same misrepresentation of events in the media as it tries to convince itself that Leave was the right thing to do as they huddle down in a vain attempt to get out of the storm of exit that they deliberately steered into.
Policy or administration? GOTV needs a database of supporters, but the multi-party nature of the campaign provided differing objectives, as was evident at PMQ before polling day when David Cameron went round the Commons getting statements of support from party leaders, even mentioning an Ulster Unionist.
http://liberalengland.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/why-remain-lost-european-referendum.html
Psephologists have found a strong statistical link between UKIP votes in elections and Leave votes in the EU referendum.
A knock-on consequence could be referendums in other EU member states against membership of the EU and / or the Euro.
Anthony – when you say stripped are you saying that the Council has repealed decision 2007/5/EC? If they have altered the order of Presidency in that decision then that requires unanimity so it is nonsense to talk of “stripping”.
Who wrote the headline?
Stripped does not mean the absence of consent.
To strip means to deprive or remove – you can strip something with our without consent. When I was a Crown Prosecutor I was regularly asset stripping offenders. Sometimes they consented.
Although it was usually a forced consent – like May’s in this case.
But I do think this fuss over whether “stripped” is an appropriate word is to miss to real point in this issue.
For goodness sake.
The UK had the 2017 Presidency and now do not.
Stripped is a perfectly reasonable word for it.
Please can we get behind campaigners like Antony Hook instead of firing off pedantic complaints?
Stripped does not mean the absence of consent
So would you say that someone who resigns is ‘stripped’ of their job?
Perhaps, if they were given no choice, like George Osborne.
But in this case we were given a choice and we chose, freely, to leave.
So ‘stripped’ is hardly the word.
‘UK resigns 2017 EU Council Presidency’ would be more accurate.
(Basically: ‘stripped’ makes it sound like this it was some kind of punishment, rather than something we willingly chose).
When I was a Crown Prosecutor I was regularly asset stripping offenders.
That is a correct use of the term ‘strip’ because as a Crown Prosecutor you had the legal authority to asset strip people of their UK assets. No one in the EU possesses the same power over the UK…
No one in the EU possesses the same power over the UK
I think what really is annoying people is the infantilisation implicit in the spin that deciding to leave the EU was a Bad Thing for Britain to do, a political tantrum by an immature nation, and now the country is being punished by being made to sit on the ‘naughty step’.
Just as an aside asset stripping doesn’t appear to be a phrase used by the CPS on its POCA guidance.
As a former editor, on an issue like this, I’d go as far as ‘sad day for UK as May resigns EU presidency’ or even ‘UK forced to resign EU presidency’ or ‘2017 presidency decision: a missed opportunity’.
I am a pedant, I know. But the issue for me is how this looks to those who are fence-sitting on Brexit or on the government’s handling of it. And that’s more people than phrases like ‘the 48%’ allow for.
We need to be a party perceived as making telling points, not one that scores cheap points. And sometimes the difference there is wafer thin.
I know you’re a lawyer, Anthony, as well as an able and articulate campaigner. But for me this is a communications issue, not a dictionary-definition issue.
The fuss over a word that implies to the majority of ordinary non-lawyer citizens that something has been forcibly taken away is a very legitimate fuss. Trying to deliberately mislead people into thinking something that isn’t the case, and then when caught defining the words used to mean something other than common usage, is a trick I would associate with UKIP politicians. Spin. And it is one of those political tricks that may have short term benefit but really puts voters off. I must agree with Matt above.