Main topics discussed by the European Council

The chart below shows that, between December 2009 and December 2014, under the presidency of Herman Van Rompuy, the most prominent topics to feature in European Council conclusions were economic governance, external relations, and jobs and growth. The high degree of attention paid to economic issues was clearly a result of the global financial crisis.
Due to the unprecedented flows of migrants into the EU from 2015, migration was the most prominent topic during Donald Tusk’s mandate as President of the European Council (December 2014 to November 2019). Other topics which featured prominently in the conclusions during his tenure were external relations, external security and defence, digital policy, and climate and energy.
During Charles Michel’s first term (December 2019 to end of May 2022), the most visible topics were external relations, the coronavirus pandemic, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and the Next Generation EU (NGEU) recovery fund.
The chart below shows the main topics discussed during the two mandates of Herman Van Rompuy and Donald Tusk, as well as during Charles Michel’s first mandate, based on the proportion of the conclusions devoted to each issue. The spiral charts show the topics discussed in 2019, 2020 and 2021.