The reason for SUMMIT is the paradox of the European Council taking centre stage in EU politics but being still largely underrepresented in academic curricula and the public sphere. The European Council remains the most under-researched EU institution, despite its leading role concerning all major decisions on enlargement and treaty revisions as well as in foreign policy and the day-to-day policy-making during the Eurozone crisis. The general public knows little about its work or how it is embedded in the EU institutional framework. One reason for this is the lack of suitable and up-to-date teaching material. SUMMIT’s outputs will fill these teaching, research and knowledge gaps. The broad range of activities and products will include a) teaching and information material comprising a set of online modules (enriched with expert interviews), a quadrilingual online quiz game, contributions to online news platforms and Wikipedia, a website, newsletters, and academic publications; b) teaching four international seminars, targeting Bachelor, Master and prospective Ph.D students; c) public events, including a series of roundtables on the European Council in ten European cities; d) a kick-off and dissemination conference. SUMMIT will have an international and multidisciplinary impact: It will stimulate general interest in and enhance the debate on the European Council by bringing together experts and civil society from EU member states and beyond. SUMMIT will spread research-based knowledge by producing innovative teaching material including expert interviews from the roundtables, and contribute to free access online information platforms to ensure the further usability beyond the project’s lifetime. The project will promote EU-studies with a particular focus on the European Council, and sustainably disseminate its products and results via different channels, e.g. addressing academia, practitioners in the area of education, civil society and the general public.