On the first day of 2021 Portugal takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union under the motto “Time to deliver: for a fair, green and digital recovery”, following the national programme guidelines, approved by the Council of Ministers meeting on 17 December 2020.

The Council of the European Union is the institution representing the governments of the Member-States and the Presidency is held in rotation for six-month periods.  In order to ensure continuity in terms of the programme, the Member-States work closely together in a system of “trios”, introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009. The current presidency trio is made up of Germany (second half of 2020), Portugal (first half of 2021) and Slovenia (second half of 2021), which presented their joint working programme in June 2020.​