New EU diplomatic service raises questions and confusion

By David Haworth, in Brussels

Next Monday, (19/10) Mrs. Catherine Day will deliver the most important speech of her life.

Who is she, you’ll probably ask. Indeed, for someone of immense influence this tall, blond middle-aged Irishwoman is a reclusive figure, shy – not writing very much, still less seeking out audiences.

But, as the secretary general of the European Commission, the lady is the power behind Commission president José Manuel Barroso’s throne.

She is the institution’s leaderene though hiding behind the good manners and discretion of a classic civil servant. Catherine Day is seldom heard and rarely seen.

In a few days, however, she will stand before a huge audience of colleagues to explain to them how the clumsily-titled ‘external action service’ is to be developed and how it will affect their working lives.

Everybody directly connected in some way to the European Union has been so hot and bothered for the past 16 months about whether Ireland would endorse the Lisbon Treaty in a second attempt that little attention has been given to many of the political sweetmeats it contains.

Even though the Czech President Vaclav Klaus continues to tease us about whether he will finally ratify the treaty, there is nonetheless now more time to look at the implications the treaty has for everyone.

The first surprise is that where the curious might have expected the treaty to be detailed and explicit, it is not. The charter’s draftsmen have not joined up all the dots: there are gaps, lacunae, black holes even, where the layman might have expected limpid legalese.

There was much recent talk, you will recall, before the Irish did as they were told that the Lisbon Treaty is going to ‘streamline’ the institutions and speed up their decision-making.

Chief among the treaty’s creations will be the said external action service, a bureaucracy of between 6,000 – 8,000 staff which is intended eventually to morph into a European diplomatic service so that the Union can deploy its ‘soft power’ across the world – speaking, it’s hoped, with one voice.

But the confection officials are now working on what is going to be a colossal dog’s dinner.

None of the implied structural changes were essayed in the treaty. ‘Lisbon’ has nothing to say even on the institutional re-arrangements EU leaders will now have to make.

A three-cornered fight between the Commission, the EU Council and the European Parliament has already broken out about the relative influence and responsibility these three institutions may have. Which will have ultimate control over an EU diplomatic service?

Barroso has already said he’s “afraid” of a strong politician (such as perhaps former UK prime minister Tony Blair) being installed as the president of the EU Council – a new job and another offspring engendered by Lisbon. But some colleagues say his more important rival in the limelight will be another child of the treaty, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, a person who, by the treaty’s decree, will also be a member of the Barroso Commission.

And who will be this chief diplomat’s inevitable deputies? What will their responsibilities consist of?

Although the EAS is supposed to create a unitary system of EU foreign policymaking, the EU it will represent has no “legal personality” and isn’t sovereign.

There is no agreement internally about what will happen to the third world nations currently the responsibility of the Commission’s Development Directorate-General once the EAS staggers to its feet.

Above all, how will future EU “embassies” co-operate with those of embassies belonging to EU sovereign nations? How will this crazy duplication be settled in terms of protocol?

Will the EU Excellency be able to pull rank over a mere French, German, British or Spanish Excellency? Talk about kafuffles among the diplomatic cocktails: egos gleaming like the medals on their chests, stiff upper lips as rigid as armor, arsenic and lost face.

Above all, what will the host capitals make of this — what the French call “une situation etriquee”?

This brings us back to Catherine’s big day.

It falls to her to answer such questions and the hundreds more Eurocrats have already written, wanting to know how the EU will now knit its own foreign service.