Introduction
While the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty continues across the European Union, debates and discussions behind closed doors are intensifying in Brussels on how the EU will in future organise and present itself across the full range of external affairs issues – from foreign and security policy to trade and development. It is a vital debate for the EU’s future role in the world.
The Lisbon Treaty creates two new top posts – a permanent president of the European Council and a ‘double-hatted’ high representative of the Union for foreign affairs and security policy who will also be a vice-president of the European Commission. These two posts, along with the president of the European Commission, will constitute the EU’s main three faces to the world, and all three of them will have a role in the EU’s external affairs. The rotating presidency, though still in existence, will no longer – or so it is intended – contribute to the EU’s external representation.
The EU’s new high representative will preside over a European diplomatic service – the European External Action Service (EEAS) and be responsible for the Union’s delegations to third countries and international organisations. The future structure and scope of the EEAS are already being discussed and, in many cases, hotly contested in high-level formal and informal discussions. Any areas, such as defence, that may end up outside the EEAS will nonetheless, as provided for in the treaty, also be under the authority of the high representative. He or she will also preside over the foreign affairs council, and at the same time will have responsibility for the Commission’sexternal relations and for coordinating other aspects of the EU’s external action. It’s a vast job.
Although the Lisbon Treaty defines the broad responsibilities of the three top EU jobs – the Commission and Council presidents and the high representative – ambiguities remain with considerable potential for overlap and duplication. The mid-year European Council summit is expected to have an informal – possibly dinner – discussion of the scope of these three jobs (with German Chancellor Angela Merkel said to have proposed the leaders discuss five or six main questions on this).
The overall intention of these new posts and structures is to increase the coherence, clarity and clout of the EU in its global activities, combined with the new set of principles and goals for the EU’s international actions set out in the Lisbon Treaty. Given the range of EU external activities from trade, development, environment and enlargement to foreign and security policy, the EU has the potential to increase substantially its ‘soft power’ impact in the world, if it gets this right.
But there is a risk that these broader dimensions of the EU’s interests and goals in its external activities are lost sight of in the discussions currently under way. Firstly, the – for now – highly restricted, closed-door discussions about these three jobs and the EEAS risk becoming a power battle or turffight, not only between Commission and Council secretariats but also between these two institutions and the member states. Secondly, the resulting structures and division of responsibilities, depending how they are drawn, may create new dividing lines and in some areas less not more coherence.
This paper analyses some of the main discussions and range of views currently being explored in the on-going high-level meetings that are considering these issues. It draws on a set of off-the-record interviews with a number of people close to, or actually engaged in, these discussions. The aim is to throw some light on these discussions and encourage a broader debate while options are still genuinely open.
The paper first considers the processes that are under way and the likely timing of future debate and decision. It then looks at some of the issues concerning the top three jobs before considering in more detail a range of issues thrown up by the process of designing the future EEAS.
Read the full report at here
|