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...