Meetings under the Lisbon Treaty (December 2009 – October 2014)

The graph shows the number of meetings held by the European Council from December 2009 to November 2014. (Meetings under the current President, Donald Tusk, are not covered by the study.) A total of 25 regular meetings were held, plus five informal meetings and five extraordinary meetings, making a total of 35. Informal meetings allow for exchanges of views without binding decisions being taken or written conclusions published. Informal meetings took place once in 2010, 2011 and 2014 and twice in 2012.
Extraordinary meetings are held to discuss urgent matters. The first to take place after the entry into force of Lisbon Treaty was on 11 March 2011 to discuss the events in the Southern Neighbourhood, in particular the violence used by the Libyan government against its people. There was a further extraordinary meeting in 2012. Three were held in 2014, addressing the crisis in Ukraine and the situation in the Southern Neighbourhood, as well as EU institutional renewal in the context of the new Commission and appointment of Tusk as President.