Italy Takes Over EU Council Presidency

This week, Italy has taken over the EU Council Presidency, for the first time since 2003. It also marks the start of a new presidency trio; from 1 July 2014 to 31 December 2015 the presidency trio will be made up of Italy, Latvia and Luxembourg.

Later Wednesday, Italian Prime Minister and President of the Council of Ministers, Matteo Renzi, will presents the objectives and priorities for the six-month Italian presidency in front of the European Parliament. You can find the programme of the trio here.

You can follow the tweets of the Italian Presidency here.

Our colleagues at the European Parliamentary Research Service have gathered a useful list of resources related to Italy and the European Union; you can find it here. Additionally, there is a collection of resources specifically for the Italian Presidency, which you can find here.

For whom this is still insufficient information, the University of Cardiff through its European Sources Online project gathers information sources for many countries, including for Italy. Some scholarly literature on the subject of the Italian Presidency – predictably focused on the previous exercise in 2003 – can be found here. Also see the Presidency section in our online bibliography on the Council.