Global Europe

It looks as if on July 8 -- the last day before the summer break of the legislative session -- the European Parliament (EP) will cast its vote on the Draft Council Resolution on establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS). This will raise the prospects that the service could become operational around the end of the year and engage for what is badly needed: helping the EU to shape a better, more coherent and consistent foreign and security policy.

Almost seven month of institutional infighting and tough negotiations between Council, Commission, Member States and the European Parliament will then draw to a close. But one might not feel too secure. After all, there is still difficult business left over for decision when the EP will reconvene in September. The financial and staff regulations have to be adapted and the 2010 EU budget is to be amended before Lady Ashton could eventually take over the new foreign policy switchboard of the EU.

The Treaty of Lisbon was supposed to enable the EU to face up to the challenges of the 21st century. A new foreign and security policy architecture was destined to serve these ends. The haggling surrounding the set-up of one of its cornerstones, the EEAS, points yet into another direction. Somehow it seems that in the years of tough and protracted negotiations and the never-ending ratification process it has been forgotten why people wanted this reform in the first place. The fact that Europe can survive in a rapidly changing world only if it finds common responses to increasingly complex challenges has not played a role in the disputes surrounding the EEAS, nor has the fact that China and India, two extremely self-confident countries, are on the brink of decisively changing the balance of power in international relations. The reverse is true. Hitherto the debate about the EEAS has excluded strategic thinking of any kind. How the EEAS has to be structured so that it can serve the interests of the Europeans in the international framework and under what for them are increasingly difficult conditions took if at all a backseat. A department for strategic planning was included in the organizational chart of the EEAS only as a result of pressure from the EP.

Thus, the agreement on the basic structure of the diplomatic service is just another promise on a better future. It will need all the ambition and skills of Lady Ashton to develop this service over the coming years into a “joined-up service” delivering on the existing nexus of diplomacy, development and defence and capable of advancing the Lisbon Treaty's goal of strengthening and unifying the EU's presence on the global stage.

There is this famous proverb of last resort: Hope springs eternal! So let us hope that the EEAS can help to overcome the ill-tempered division between Commission and Council as well as Member States that hampered the EU over the past to punch according to its weight and shape global governance according to its values and interests. Let us hope, that the service will provide for better interaction and coordination between the different EU´s external policies which are still following two distinct approaches: the communitarian one of the Commission and the intergovernmental decision-taking of the Member States. Let us hope that within the EEAS an esprit de corps will develop over time that makes Europe´s diplomats a recognizable force for good around the world. And let us hope that the espousal for human rights will take centre stage and is mainstreamed into the service at every level.

One could certainly go on with this list of hope. But it should be crystal-clear by now that if the EU doesn´t get down to business with its new foreign and security policy architecture, Europe´s gradual decline into irrelevance – as the Group of Wisemen has rightly pointed to – will become unavoidable. No one could hope for this.