The EU Presidency – Comparing the Italian and Irish Presidencies of the 2003–04 Intergovernmental Conference

Abstract

This chapter explores whether the governments holding the EU Presidency during the 2003–04 IGC were able to exercise leadership over the negotiations on the EU Constitutional Treaty. The case of the 2003–04 IGC is a tempting one, as it was put in the hand of two consecutive Presidencies, the Italian and the Irish governments, that both had the ambition of concluding the negotiations but adopted strikingly different leadership strategies. The comparison becomes all the more interesting in the light of the unprecedented crisis that emerged when, contrary to the initial intentions, the negotiations failed to be concluded under the Italian Presidency in December 2003 and hence had to be continued under the Irish Presidency.