Why the EEAS is fighting for its future

(Nicholas Vinocur, Jacopo Barigazzi – Politico) When EU leaders launched the bloc’s diplomatic service in 2011, the idea was to give Europe a much more powerful and unified voice on the world stage. But in typical EU fashion, the leaders didn’t want that voice to be too strong. So they gave their new chief diplomat, the “high representative,” two bosses — themselves, and the European Commission. “This was hashed out in a messy compromise at three in the morning,” remembers Pierre Sellal, France’s powerful ambassador to the EU for 10 years, who was deeply involved in the negotiations to design the European External Action Service (EEAS). A decade and a half on, that messy EU compromise is unraveling. Facing budget cuts, a battle for talent and a lack of policy tools to back up its diplomatic role, the EEAS, now headed by former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, has been losing out in a protracted turf war with the Commission headed by Ursula von der Leyen ― while national governments, which have largely kept their foreign policy independence, are also weighing reform. In more than a dozen conversations with POLITICO over the past three months, 10 current and former EU officials and diplomats described an EEAS in crisis, lacking a clear mission and largely unable to compete with the Commission’s much greater financial resources and policy firepower. While Kallas is fighting back, unveiling new senior hires and promising internal reforms, EU countries have yet to publicly spell out plans to strengthen the service. – Why the EEAS is fighting for its future – POLITICO