Sub-state entity participation during the 2010 presidencies of the EU council

The theoretical development in several social disciplines identifies a transformation of the functionality of sub-state governments. It has been argued that regions progressively acquire functions of representation, legitimacy, and governability within the state, not only at national but also at international scales. Furthermore, it has been claimed that the European Union (EU) rotating presidencies (which still coexists even with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon) constitute such an interesting opportunity for the Member States to-during a 6-month period-highlight their own interests, at European scale, thus influencing the EU political agenda. Within this context, we will seek to underline how the Member States regional participation affects the different EU presidencies. Hence, the objective of this research will be to assess the influence of the regional institutional actors (regional parliaments, cabinets, and representation offices in Brussels) on the main priorities and policies of the countries' presidency of the EU. Very little scientific research has been done on the study of the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, and to our knowledge; nothing has ever been done around the involvement of the regional actors in such process. Our aim is therefore to fill in this gap in the political science literature by identifying the key regional actors in the Presidency of the EU and drawing conclusions from the comparison of the recent experiences of two highly regionalised countries, i.e., the Spanish (January-June 2010) and Belgian (July-December 2010) presidencies. This attempt constitutes an innovative and unique opportunity to fully study the impact of the regions on the presidency of the Council of the EU (the next presidencies of the EU for Spain and Belgium are scheduled in 2023).