List of European Council meetings
The current practice is that meetings are always called and organized to the extent found needed by the European Council president.
[5] [5] Since 2010, all formal (scheduled or extraordinary) European Council meetings have taken place in Brussels and been chaired by a permanent President, as introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon.
The European Council met in Cologne, Germany, on 3–4 June 1999 to consider issues after the Treaty of Amsterdam came into force.
In relation to the European Security and Defence Policy, a major element of the CFSP, the council declared that the EU "must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO".
It was the first U.S. presidential visit to Sweden, and was intended as an opportunity to discuss differences on climate negotiations, WTO and Middle East issues with the EU leaders.
According to the police, more than 50,000 demonstrators gathered in Gothenburg during the three days of the summit,[41] among them a smaller number with foreign nationality.
The demonstrating organisations arranged many conferences, the biggest conference (besides, of course, the EU summit itself) being Fritt forum (Free Forum) which hosted 50 lectures and seminars and was funded by the city of Gothenburg, the Swedish justice department and Sweden's foreign ministry department among others.
The first one occurred on 14 June after the police had surrounded and enclosed the Hvitfeldtska gymnasiet where demonstrators had been invited by the city to stay during the summit.
[citation needed] The riots left large areas of central Gothenburg demolished due to the violent protests of the demonstrators, as well as leaving many stores looted.
Never before had this many heads of state met in Sweden, and thousands of police were to stand guard in Gothenburg to keep order during these three days of June 2001.
The police had long prepared for disturbances and also had many different intelligence services directed at the groups participating in the planning of demonstrations.
American police tactics against protesters were in use such as a psycho-tactic unit that was supposed to have a dialogue with demonstrating organisations.
The officers in command of the action stated that they were very pleased with how the police had served during the summit (an opinion which at the time was shared by the government).
[citation needed] One of the most noticed cases is the so-called information central, which was stormed by Nationella insatsstyrkan during the first day of the summit.
[citation needed] The police officer in charge for the EU summit, Håkan Jaldung [sv], was accused in a trial of preventing about 100 people at the Schillerska from leaving the place for several hours, but was found innocent.
The declaration reviews the progress of European integration over the last fifty years, tracing it back to its origins in the horrors of World War II, and poses a number of questions to be answered by the convention.
