Spotlight Europe # 2010/05. External Action Service. Much Ado About Nothing
After lengthy debates that dragged on for several months, Catherine Ashton, the High Representative, and members of the European Parliament reached agreement on the future structure of the European External Action Service (EEAS). As soon as the European Parliament and the EU foreign ministers have given their assent, Lady Ashton can begin to make appointments to fill the EEAS vacancies. But what are the tasks to which the EEAS will be devoting its attention? How can it do justice to the very different expectations of the European Parliament, the Commission and the member states?
In our current Spotlight, "The European External Action Service: Much Ado About Nothing," Stefani Weiss of the Bertelsmann Stiftung shows that the new EEAS certainly does not signify the advent of a new dynamism in the EU's common foreign policy. There are too many differences between the interests of the various countries, and between the positions adopted by the EU institutions. It is clearly a drawback, Weiss believes, "that when the EEAS was introduced, conceptual and strategic ideas on how the service can be beneficial for both the member states and the EU as a whole were not deemed to be important."
In the long term all that remains is the hope that the EEAS will have the effect of a large socialization structure. "Since Commission civil servants, Council civil servants and national diplomats will be forced to work together under one roof in the EEAS, the differences which are still so noticeable today, and the question of where someone comes from and to whom he has to be loyal, may in the long term be overcome to make way for a European esprit de corps."
№7-8(46), 2010