The Foreign Affairs Council is a configuration of the Council of the European Union and meets once a month. Meetings bring together the Foreign Ministers of the Member States. Ministers responsible for European Affairs, Defence, Development or Trade also participate depending on the items on agenda. The configuration is unique in that chaired by the High Representative rather than the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

It was created in 2009 by the Treaty of Lisbon by splitting it from the "General Affairs and External Relations Council" with the other part becoming the General Affairs Council. The General and Foreign Councils are the only two Councils mentioned in the EU treaties.

At its sessions, the Council deals with the whole of the EU's external action, including Common Foreign and Security Policy, Common Security and Defence Policy, foreign trade and development cooperation. A priority in recent years for the Council, in cooperation with the European Commission, has been to ensure coherence in the EU's external action across the range of instruments at the EU's disposal.

Affairs Council may refer to:

A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu.^{[citation needed]} The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries. In recent times, due to the deepening level of globalization and transnational activities, the states will also have to interact with non-state actors. The aforementioned interaction is evaluated and monitored in attempts to maximize benefits of multilateral international cooperation. Since the national interests are paramount, foreign policies are designed by the government through high-level decision making processes. National interests accomplishment can occur as a result of peaceful cooperation with other nations, or through exploitation. Usually, creating foreign policy is the job of the head of government and the foreign minister (or equivalent). In some countries the legislature also has considerable oversight.

Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, PC (born 20 March 1956) is a British Labour politician who in 2009 became the European Union's High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Under the Treaty of Lisbon this post is combined with the post of Vice-President of the European Commission.

Her political career began in 1999 when she was created a Life Peer (Baroness Ashton of Upholland) by the Labour Government under which she took on a ministerial position (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State) in the Department for Education and Skills in 2001, and subsequently in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and Ministry of Justice. She became a Privy Councillor PC in May 2006.

Catherine Ashton was appointed Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Queen's Privy Council in Gordon Brown’s first Cabinet in June 2007. As well as Leader of the Lords, she held responsibility in the House of Lords for equalities issues, and she was instrumental in steering the EU's Treaty of Lisbon through the UK's upper chamber. In 2008, she succeeded Peter Mandelson as Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission.

William Jefferson Hague MP FRSL (born 26 March 1961) is a British politician, who is the current Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State. He served as Leader of the Conservative Party from June 1997 to September 2001. In Parliament, he has represented the constituency of Richmond (Yorks) since 1989.

Educated at Wath-upon-Dearne Grammar School, a state grammar school, then the University of Oxford (graduating with First Class Honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics) and INSEAD, Hague was first elected to the House of Commons in a by-election in 1989. Hague rose through the ranks of John Major's government and entered the Cabinet in 1995 as the Secretary of State for Wales. Following the Conservatives' defeat in the 1997 general election, he was elected as leader of the Conservative Party. He resigned as party leader after the 2001 general election following a landslide defeat to the Labour Party. He was the first leader of the Conservatives not to have become Prime Minister since Austen Chamberlain in the early 1920s.