Foreign Service test

Calling Europe: would Kissinger have dialled Catherine Ashton’s number? Photograph: Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library

When Catherine Ashton made her debut appearance in the European Parliament in December, she didn’t know where to sit. Should she position herself on the European Commission end of the podium, or the EU Council end, or somewhere in between?

“I knew that wherever I sat I would be in trouble,” she told MEPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “I wish there was a third seat. I wish I could move between the two.”

Her dilemma seemed symbolic of the huge internal tensions that she is having to navigate as the EU’s first high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.

Lady Ashton has to do nothing less than create a whole new structure to represent the EU externally – but not, as she repeatedly told MEPs, from a blank piece of paper. There are well-established pre-existing bodies and staff in the Commission, Council and member states which need to be moulded into the European External Action Service (EEAS), drawing on their national and institutional traditions but forming something distinctively new.

And all of that must come before she begins to address the many challenges of diplomacy and global problem-solving where the high representative and the EEAS will ultimately be judged – on the positive difference that she and her new service make in the world.

“It is not a daunting task, but it is a big one,” Lady Ashton told MEPs in December. It was probably the biggest understatement of a very understated performance.

Work on preparing the EEAS was kick-started by the signing of the Lisbon Treaty in the Portuguese capital in December 2007 but largely halted by the Irish rejection of the text seven months later. No one wanted to be caught pre-empting the treaty’s ratification but the result was a standstill which left a mountain of work for the nascent office of the high representative.

The post was created to answer the question which former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger apparently never actually asked: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?”

While the high representative job is often said to be “double-hatted” because of the dual mandate as senior vice- president of the Commission as well as high representative for foreign and security policy, it actually incorporates at least three jobs with the responsibility to take over from the rotating EU presidency in chairing the Foreign Affairs Council.

Arguments are already raging over how the EEAS is to be staffed, funded and run. Turf wars seem built into the structure, with the only public Council paper stating that the EEAS, while ultimately answerable to Ashton, will serve a number of masters: “The scope of the EEAS should allow the High Rep to fully carry out his/her mandate as defined in the Treaty. To ensure the consistency and better coordination of the Union’s external action, the EEAS should also assist the President of the European Council and the President as well as the Members of the Commission in their respective functions in the area of external relations as well as closely cooperate with the Member States.”

Many of the logistical issues, including the budget and number of staff, will be set out by Ashton in her proposal to the European Parliament in the spring. The only thing that seems certain on personnel is an equal three-way split between the Directorate-General for External Relations in the Commission, the Directorate-General for Politico-Military Affairs in the Council Secretariat, and secondees from the member states.

The EEAS will have geographical and thematic desks merged from the Commission and the Council – but while some will deal with candidate countries, enlargement will still be the responsibility of the Commission.

Trade and development policy will also remain under the day-to-day control of commissioners, with José Manuel Barroso having been quick out of the blocks to safeguard Commission powers. To the surprise of some in the Council, he included neighbourhood policy – building ties with the EU’s eastern neighbours like Ukraine and Georgia – in the job of the proposed Enlargement Commissioner, Stefan Füle of the Czech Republic.

“The challenge is to find the right balance of the double-hatting because it is not an easy institutional setting that she is supposed to take over,” says German MEP Franziska Brantner, a Green foreign affairs spokesperson.

“You can already see that member states are trying to pull in one direction and the institutions in another. The way that José Manuel Barroso has made three foreign affairs commissioners – and especially putting neighbourhood policy with the enlargement commissioner – I thought was a clear sign of keeping as much as possible with the Commission.

“In that scenario she has to say, I am going to be the leader of the three commissioners because I am also vice-president. That leadership role is going to be difficult. I think Barroso is playing his own game while the member states – especially the French and the British – are taking most of the posts in the secretariat and positioning their people.”

With so many demands on her time, the question of who stands in for Ashton when she is otherwise engaged has become politically charged. One Commission source says: “She does not have formal deputies and we expect that the three commissioners – Andris Piebalgs (development), Rumiana Jeleva (international cooperation, humanitarian aid and crisis response) and Stefan Füle – will be asked while she is flying around the world to effectively deputise for Ashton on these issues.

“The Commission has also named Andris Piebalgs as Commission representative on the Foreign Affairs Council, rather than just saying that Lady Ashton is vice-president of the Commission therefore she will be the only one in that committee.”

A Council source adds that there is another “lively debate” involving some ministers of foreign affairs who are trying to position themselves as deputies, “saying that if you don’t have time and need someone to go to the Middle East, I am more than happy to be your envoy…”

Then there is the question of how the new post of vice-president/high representative should represent the concerns of the European Parliament. Will Ashton prioritise human rights, a key demand of MEPs, over the more pragmatic tendencies of some member states? This is an especially tough call when dealing with regimes such as Russia and Iran, where some EU governments have traditionally played down rights demands in order to win other foreign policy gains. Should the progress of Gazprom pipelines be linked to civil liberties concerns?

MEPs will also be looking to expand their influence in other ways, as disclosed by Poland’s Pawel Kowal of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, who has asked Ashton whether MEPs will be invited to attend bilateral EU summits with partners such as Russia and Ukraine.

Ashton is being offered plenty of advice to help prepare her vision for how the EEAS will develop, with federalists pushing for its 130 delegations to act more and more like the foreign ministry of an EU state, with consular powers.

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal-democratic ALDE MEPs, says: “There has to be the possibility for a European citizen when he has problems in another country and there is no embassy of his own country to go to, that he can go to the EEAS. That would be one of the major achievements if we could create it.”

The gradual development of unified EU embassies horrifies opponents of European federalism. David Campbell-Bannerman, a UK Independence Party MEP, says: “They are talking about creating a diplomatic ethos, just like the Commission where commissioners are not meant to represent the national interest. The question I ask is whose interest will they represent in the EEAS, because embassies traditionally represent national interests. If you have EU embassies, this is an EU state.”

The creation of this streamlined service raises further questions, such as the old chestnut of a single seat for the EU on the United Nations Security Council.

But in these early days, the determination of bigger countries to preserve their distinctive foreign policies worries supporters of the EEAS, who fear it will be sidelined by a lack of solidarity. Javier Solana’s impact as high representative (in its less weighty, pre-Lisbon incarnation) was weakened not just by the big divisive issues of his tenure such as Iraq and Kosovo, but also by member states going much further than 27 would ever agree to do, such as Italy’s cosy relationship with Libya.

“To be honest I think the member states right now do not want the Kissinger phone number because they still want to be the ones to be called. They are not ready to give that up,” says Brantner.

“Lady Ashton showed in her December hearing that she was good at handling nasty questions but even if she is brilliant, member states will not allow her to have their role. I think we finally have the right institutions in place – but not yet the right governments.”