Research Data on the Council of the European Union

The purpose of this site is to facilitate cumulative research on the Council of the EU, by increasing the accessibility of data sets collected by researchers. For a long time European Union scholars have complained about the lack of systematic empirical data on what is going on inside the Council. One reason for this state has been the closed nature of the Council. This situation is changing however.

Minutes and voting records are now open for the public, and scholars have been fast to collect the data and use it for systematic analyses. Furthermore, several interview studies of Council officials have been conducted in the last years, drastically improving the data situation. As a result EU scholars have found themselves in a situation where old wisdoms can be tested, and new challenges for the Council stemming from the continuous process of deepening and widening of the EU may be analysed in a much more thorough way than was possible before.

Research on the Council is on the rise! In order to further spur this development the Centre for European Research at Göteborg University (CERGU) has set up this website. We will try to assemble as many as we can of the systematic data collections made by researchers, hopefully encouraging further cumulative research. Some of the data will be originally published here. In other cases we will provide links and information on where the data can be found.