{"id":24652,"date":"2025-10-27T02:51:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T21:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=24652"},"modified":"2025-10-30T16:03:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T10:33:25","slug":"european-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/european-council\/","title":{"rendered":"European Council"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About European Council:\u00a0<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is the European Union\u2019s institution that defines the <strong>general political direction<\/strong> and priorities of the European Union.<\/li>\n<li>It was created as an <strong>informal forum<\/strong> in 1974 for discussion between heads of state or government of the EU member states.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Treaty of Maastricht<\/strong>: Under this <strong>treaty <\/strong>the European Council acquired a <strong>formal status and role<\/strong> to provide the impetus and general political guidelines for the EU.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Members:<\/strong> The members of the European Council are <strong>the heads of state or government of the 27 EU member states<\/strong>, the European Council President and the President of the European Commission.<\/li>\n<li>It usually meets <strong>4 times a year<\/strong> \u2013 but the President can convene additional meetings to address urgent issues.<\/li>\n<li>It generally decides issues by consensus \u2013 but by unanimity or qualified majority in some cases<strong>. Only<\/strong> the heads of <strong>state\/government can vote.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What are the functions?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>It decides on the EU&#8217;s overall direction and political priorities \u2013 but <strong>does not pass laws.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It deals with complex or sensitive issues that cannot be resolved at lower levels of intergovernmental cooperation<\/li>\n<li>It <strong>sets the EU&#8217;s common foreign &amp; security<\/strong> policy, taking into account EU strategic interests and defence implications<\/li>\n<li>It nominates and appoints candidates to certain high profile EU level roles, such as the ECB and the Commission<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Headquarters:<\/strong> Brussels, Belgium.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>\u00a0Q1: What is the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)?<\/h3>\n<p>European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is an intergovernmental organisation established in 1960 by the Stockholm Convention.It promotes free trade and economic integration between its members within Europe and globally.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/pib.gov.in\/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2029399\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Prime Minister congratulates H.E Ant\u00f3nio Costa on being elected as President of the European Council<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The European Council is the European Union\u2019s institution that defines the general political direction and priorities of the European Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":24653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}