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The Council of the European Union is a complex negotiation machinery daily managed by two institutional actors the Council general secretariat and the rotating Council presidency. These two pillars, working in close interaction and collaboration, keep the Council coordination system smoothly running. This research raises two main questions how does the interaction between the presidency and the Council secretariat takes place in the EU decision- making process? What drives the different patterns of the interaction between these institutional actors? In order to answer these compelling questions, the author approaches the interaction phenomena from the perspective of comparative institutionalist and general communication studies in the policy framework of development cooperation. This tentative study has a great potential to be further developed by EU researchers, offering also a comprehensive insight of the Council´s everyday work for students of European studies and non-specialists interested in the EU decision-making processes.

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Ele Raik holds MA in Analysing Europe from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. She has also obtained a postgraduate diploma in International Relations and European Integration from the Estonian School of Diplomacy. Her research interests concentrate on the EU administrative governance, development cooperation and European security.

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