The price of EU action
As the EU cracks down on its members’ spending, a number of member countries are firing back at the EU bureaucracy’s own expenditures. One big ticket item not yet budgeted for: the EU’s new corps of diplomats, energetically titled the External Action Service. The service is designed to put into human form the long-sought common ...
As the EU cracks down on its members' spending, a number of member countries are firing back at the EU bureaucracy's own expenditures. One big ticket item not yet budgeted for: the EU's new corps of diplomats, energetically titled the External Action Service. The service is designed to put into human form the long-sought common EU foreign policy.
As the EU cracks down on its members’ spending, a number of member countries are firing back at the EU bureaucracy’s own expenditures. One big ticket item not yet budgeted for: the EU’s new corps of diplomats, energetically titled the External Action Service. The service is designed to put into human form the long-sought common EU foreign policy.
Supporters of the Lisbon Treaty, which took effect last December, say such a service is long overdue. They say the EU is a major global power economically but has not been punching its weight diplomatically.
Expected price tag? About $4 billion. For all the expense and the controversy the planned service has generated, however, it seems to be barely on the radar screens of national diplomats from EU countries I’ve spoken with recently, which does not bode well.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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