The EU Presidency is a legal obligation introduced by the Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community, the so-called Treaty of Rome of 1957. This treaty stipulates that member states alternately take on the Presidency of the Council of Ministers for a period of six months, according to an order of rotation unanimously agreed by the Council of Ministers. From the time it was established until the time the European Community had twelve members, this meant that the order of rotation was alphabetical in the language of each member state. In order to prevent the same country presiding twice in a row in the same six-month term, a system of two six-year cycles was established so that each member state presided in the first and second half-year term.

After the enlargement to 15 countries in 1995 a new system of rotation was introduced to ensure that each Troika comprising the past, present and future Presidency always included at least one of the large member states. To achieve this, the Netherlands was defined as a large state. The countries were divided into two groups: large and small countries in each group in alphabetical order, with the order of rotation established so that each large country would be followed by two small ones.

During preparations for the last great enlargement, the Secretariat General of the EU Council was already drafting possible versions of the order of rotation to take into account the principles of alphabetical rotation and the division into large and small member states. Since the Union of 27 member states would only include seven large countries, the old rotation system of one large country in three consecutive presidencies would no longer be possible. In 2007 a list of future presiding countries was prepared which considers the past order of rotation and the criteria of size and geographical location in such a way that each group contains one large, one medium-sized and one small country.

List of Presidencies 1958-2020

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