The Council of the European Union is one of the EU's seven institutions, and one of its two legislative bodies — the other being the European Parliament. The Commission proposes laws; the Council and Parliament approve, amend, or reject them. The Council does not have a fixed membership of named individuals. It meets in ten different *configurations*, each composed of national ministers responsible for the relevant policy area. When the Council discusses agriculture, the agriculture ministers show up. When it discusses finance, finance ministers. When foreign affairs, foreign ministers, chaired by the EU's High Representative. Only General Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and Economic and Financial Affairs (Ecofin) meet monthly; the others meet a few times a year, when there is business. The Council and the European Council are the only EU institutions explicitly described as *intergovernmental* — their attendees represent national executives, not the Union itself.

The Council votes in one of three ways, and the way matters more than the words sometimes suggest. Most decisions use qualified majority voting: at least 55% of member states (so 15 of 27), together representing at least 65% of the EU population. A blocking minority requires at least four states. In a few highly *sensitive* areas — foreign and security policy chief among them — unanimity is required. One country can veto the whole table. The third option, used for procedural matters, is a simple majority. The shift toward qualified majority voting over the decades has steadily reduced the number of vetoes any single capital can wield, but the unanimity requirements that remain are the ones that produce the longest nights and the strangest improvisations, like the Ukraine vote where Hungary's absence proved more useful than its assent.

The Council's presidency is not a person. It is a country, and the country changes every six months. From 2007 onward, three consecutive member states cooperate on a shared 18-month agenda, though only one holds the gavel at any moment. The presiding state chairs the meetings (except Foreign Affairs, which is permanently chaired by the EU's High Representative) and sets the daily agenda. The arrangement is meant to give every government, large or small, a turn at directing European business. It also produces wild swings of tone and priority — a Nordic presidency might emphasize climate or transparency, a Mediterranean one migration or fisheries, a Central European one rule-of-law or enlargement. The presidency state's diplomats prepare for years in advance; their six months will be over before most policy fights are won.

The Council's home in Brussels has moved across three buildings. In 1971 the Council and its secretariat settled into the Charlemagne building, right next to the European Commission's Berlaymont. Space ran short almost immediately. The administrative branch shifted to 76 Rue Joseph II, and the language divisions scattered into the Nerviens, Frère Orban, and Guimard buildings through the 1980s. The Council met in Luxembourg City for the months of April, June, and October — a tradition baked into the 1965 deal on the location of merged EU institutions, finalized in the Edinburgh agreement. Since 2017 the main seat has been the Europa building, the curving glass lantern grafted onto a restored Art Deco facade in the European Quarter. Inside the glass shell, the actual meeting room is a wood-paneled chamber shaped like an egg, designed for confidential negotiation between ministers who must produce a consensus that 27 home audiences can live with.

Most of what the Council actually decides has been decided before the ministers walk into the room. The General Secretariat of the Council, headed by the Secretary-General, runs the continuous machinery — preparing meetings, drafting reports, translating into every official language, building agendas. Below the ministerial level sits Coreper, the Committee of Permanent Representatives, split into Coreper II (the ambassadors) and Coreper I (their deputies). Agriculture has its own dedicated Special Committee on Agriculture. Beneath those committees, dozens of working parties grind through the technical detail of every proposal. By the time a file reaches the ministers, the substance is usually resolved and the politics is what remains. When the ministers cannot resolve the politics either, the file climbs one more step — to the European Council, where the heads of government meet, and where bathroom diplomacy occasionally becomes a tool of statecraft.