The European Union is a political association, which today includes 27 countries with a total population of more than half a billion people. In the structure of its management there are two bodies that can create or approve laws common to all member states of the Union - the Parliament and the Council of the European Union. The Council includes one minister from each EU country, and its chairman is the head of government of one of these states. It is this official who is usually referred to as the “President of the European Union”.
In order to observe the principle of equality of all members of the association in the political administration of the European Union, the heads of government of each of the 27 countries become the chairpersons of the joint Council of Ministers in turn. Rotation takes place according to a pre-approved schedule, in which each chairman is assigned half a year. The last change of the head of the Council of the European Union took place on January 1 of this year - the Prime Minister of Poland (parliamentary republic) Donald Tusk transferred control to his colleague in office Helle Thorning-Schmitt from Denmark (constitutional monarchy).
However, the chairmanship of a particular country in the Council of Europe does not mean that it is she who chooses what to do for this body in the next six months. Every year and a half, an agenda is drawn up, the unresolved items of which the President of the European Union passes on to his replacement as a baton. The outgoing chairman, by tradition, sums up the work over the allotted period in his speech to European parliamentarians, and the new head of the council voices his intentions for the next six months.
This time both prime ministers had to talk mainly about the financial crisis, which during the Polish presidency grew into a political one. It is noteworthy that neither Denmark nor Poland has undertaken obligations to use the euro as a mandatory currency. Those. they are not part of the "eurozone", the problems with the debt crisis in which the Council of Ministers of the European Union has recently had to solve.
The body, chaired by the chairman of the council, meets three times during the time allotted to each state, holding two formal meetings and one informal meeting. The representative of the Danish kingdom has already chosen her quota - less than a month is left until the end of the period allotted to her. From July 1, the chairmanship of the European Council of Ministers should move to the next state on the list - Dimitris Christofias, the President of Cyprus, who is also the head of government in the small island republic, will take over.
