A very important element of the structural and substantive functioning of the Council of the European Union is a cyclic Presidency (leadership) held for a period of six months by each Member State in turn in the system of the intergovernmental councils (the Council of the European Union and the European Council). The author of the present article would like to focus on the first two presidencies of the unifi ed Germany. Both took place in the 1990s – in the first decade of the country’s functioning after reunification. They also exemplify the ‘new’ Germany’s approach to the European integration, its deepening and widening. Germany wanted to dispel the doubts of the other EU Member States whether, as the united country, it would still support the process of integration. The 21st century proved the fears pointless.