Generally, the task of EU agenda-setting belongs to the European Council, whose task is to provide the necessary impetus and political guidelines for the development of the EU. The Lisbon Treaty gave the European Council more prescriptive agenda-setting powers, and provided more detailed mechanisms for realizing those. Damian Chalmers has written that the European Council is therefore no longer confined to setting out guidelines for the EU, but is now defining its directions and priorities (Damian Chalmers, Giorgio Monti. European Union Law. Updating Supplement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 20). Article 15 (1) TEU states: "1. The European Council shall provide the Union with the necessary impetus for its development and shall define the general political directions and priorities thereof. It shall not exercise legislative functions". The European Council cooperates with Member States (in different Council configurations), and the other EU institutions in agenda-setting.

The European Council's agenda-setting is limited by the final sentence, meaning that the European Council is not trespassing the Commission's legislative initiative - the European Council, according to Article 15 (1) TEU, is not supposed to exercise legislative functions, which indicates that the legislative initiation, as well as related to that initiation functions, remain to the European Commission, who is also considered as an agenda-setter in the EU, setting out the points on what the parliaments (European Parliament, as well as the national JXUwMDM2JXUwMDBmJXUwMDE1JXUwMDFkJXUwMDA2JXUwMDAxJXUwMDBmJXUwMDBk Parliaments) will vote later.