The Open Europe newsletter has compiled French press reports about the new diplomatic service which is supposed to come to life with the Lisbon treaty. Here is the passage, in full length:
France, Germany and the UK begin negotiations over shape of EU diplomatic service
Le Monde reports that member states, including the UK, France and Germany, are already negotiating over the new “diplomatic service”, without waiting for the Lisbon Treaty to be ratified, or for the election of the EU Foreign Minister.
The French Foreign Office reports that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said this week that, during the European Council meeting on 29-30 October, “the general lines of the European External Action Service will be sketched, in other words the future EU ‘Foreign Affairs Minister’. This [diplomatic] service will have to put its members at the core of the Commission, the Council’s Secretary General, but also of the 27 member states. The credibility and effectiveness of European diplomacy will depend on its ability to analyse and act. The biggest mistake would be to create new European bureaucracy.”
He added, “I am thinking about Europe’s contribution in Afghanistan, very active but too dispersed between the Commission, the EU’s special representative and member states, depriving us of the political leadership that we could aspire to. The Lisbon Treaty will put us in the right place.”
Le Monde reports that, according to Paris, London and Berlin, the diplomatic service should not have more than a couple of hundred people in the service to begin with, and a third of the whole service should be composed by their national civil servants, contrary to the wishes of EU diplomats and small members that were hoping to use this instrument to create a real European diplomacy.
The paper also reports that the UK is also looking to integrate member states’ military contingent in Brussels into the External Action Service. The French Foreign Office quotes Bernard Kouchner saying the Lisbon Treaty, “will lead to an influential Europe that will be able to make its voice heard on the international scene because it will be more effective and visible with a stable President of the Council and…a High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and a security policy benefitting from reinforced means of actions, a true European defence policy, and the necessary conditions for powerful diplomacy. Can the diplomat do without the soldier…? I don’t think so.”
The article also reports that France and Spain have been pushing to devolve some management of development aid back to member states, but the UK and the Scandinavian members want to leave it in the hands of the Commission.