The EU’s diplomatic corps celebrates gloomy first birthday
The EU’s new diplomatic arm, the European External Action Service, was created a year ago. A product of the Lisbon Treaty, the EEAS was designed to give flesh and bone to the longstanding aspiration of a common European foreign and security policy. The service’s first chief, Britain’s Catherine Ashton, has had the unenviable task of ...
The EU's new diplomatic arm, the European External Action Service, was created a year ago. A product of the Lisbon Treaty, the EEAS was designed to give flesh and bone to the longstanding aspiration of a common European foreign and security policy. The service's first chief, Britain's Catherine Ashton, has had the unenviable task of making the EAS coherent and relevant. Operating in an often toxic political and budgetary environment, she has had to draw on and meld personnel from national diplomatic services and the EU bureaucracy.
The EU’s new diplomatic arm, the European External Action Service, was created a year ago. A product of the Lisbon Treaty, the EEAS was designed to give flesh and bone to the longstanding aspiration of a common European foreign and security policy. The service’s first chief, Britain’s Catherine Ashton, has had the unenviable task of making the EAS coherent and relevant. Operating in an often toxic political and budgetary environment, she has had to draw on and meld personnel from national diplomatic services and the EU bureaucracy.
The most obvious structural obstacle to EEAS influence has been the jealousy (and occasional disdain) of national diplomatic services, particularly those of major EU states. All EU states formally support the EEAS, but many are deeply reluctant to shed any meaningful foreign-policy autonomy. But the jealousy of nation-states has not been Ashton’s only obstacle. According to this account in the European Voice, the service has also faced stiff bureaucratic resistance from within the EU machinery. On this account, the EU’s traditional executive arm, the European Commission, has not always welcomed the EEAS to the family.
EEAS officials described [European Commission officials] as “not constructive”, even “hostile”. “It’s a nightmare dealing with some of these people,” an official said. “There is a bureaucratic instinct to have internecine warfare.” The Commission routinely issues direct instructions to Commission staff working in EU delegations instead of routing them through the head of delegation.
Many delegations are predominantly staffed by Commission officials; more than 20 delegations have no senior EEAS officials other than the ambassador. Ashton’s report says that there is “considerable concern” that ambassadors cannot delegate their financial responsibilities because current rules prevent Commission officials from dealing with the service’s administrative funding. As a result, an “excessive burden of routine administrative management” falls on the heads of delegation, whose main role should be political.
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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