Given the very long pregnancy and current birthing problems, many commentators voice pessimism about the EU External Action Service. First among the Cassandras are journalists, not always imune to cynicism, and sometimes confusing soundbites and trends. While I like many of them, I am more optimistic, also based on personal experience and anecdotes.
( One example — but at least it is articulate — is David Rennies ‘Global Europe’ in the last issue of E-Sharp.
Just now, people focus on country quotas (understandably: an internal EAS document shows huge discrepancies between a few large Western States and most others in fulfilling their quotas).
Are quotas problems due to ‘selecting the best and brightest’? 🙂
On EurActiv, you can follow the steps toward the new EAS. Notably in this interview of one of the cooks, Barroso / Ashton appointee Joao Vale de Almeida, )
One typically underestimate the time it takes to get anything done in the EU … while underating its capacity to eventually achieve things. It was the same with the internal market, with the Euro, with enlargement, and now with the diplomatic service.
One does not exclude the other, but I believe lasting institutions are built on people as much as legal texts. Education, common experiences, learning from mistakes and external challenges will progressively create an esprit de corps, nearly as strong as the national ones.
National diplomatic services are the parents of the new EAS, they are not clear yet about the baby’s future but won’t prevent it from growing.
So, let’s not throw the baby with the bathwater. The offspring cannot speak? Let him learn from his parents!
He cannot write his own views? Let him go to school first! His parents had been flirting for a long time. They were never quite monogamous: there are already some half-sisters, living in Geneva, New York, Paris, Prague etc. Now the parents signed and marry for good, but temptations do not go away, just like one does not drop old friends. The kid is crying and kicking, as are others in the maternity ward. But don’t worry: the genes are good, the parents do care and education will help. There will be several siblings: all compete for mom and dad’s attention, but all carry the family values. The parents disagree on some choices, such as passport and languages. So, the family counsel and the orientation council (also called EP) insist that the kid shall not follow in mom or dad’s steps, but become an adult on its own. And divorce is out of question. Overtime, the child’s choices will not results from parents’ compromises but on his own skills. One day, the teenager will rebel against the parents. But still carry the family values. And in due course inherit and manage the family estate. Let the baby grow and give it time!
Christophe Leclercq
Anecdotes comparing old diplomacy, trade diplomacy and External Action Service
Posted on 1 May 2010
This post is an element supporting my optimistic view about the new EU diplomatic service, at least with a medium to long term perspective. In a separate post, I explain why EAS will eventually succeed.
First, I remember visiting years ago the Embassy of a large EU country to Beijing, together a group of corporate executives investing in China. It had taken weeks to find a slot in the busy man’s agenda. During the meeting, the old style Ambassador talked for a long time about ancient history and cultural links. He seemed not to have understood what trade and business are, as if these were beneath his level. As I finally was able to put my question about China’s negociations with the WTO and any European coordination, he referred the question to an attaché, and left the room a few minutes later…
Is this the European diplomacy some want to protect by slowing down or over controling the emerging EU service?
Secondly, I was once an EU official involved in WTO negociations. No, I won’t reveal any secrets, even years later. Suffice to say that I was representing DG COMP (then DG IV) in the EU Delegation on telecoms negociations, a follow-up to the Uruguay Round. Like for all trade matters, and even more for services, the EU Delegation was led by the Commission but including representatives of all Member States, our ‘Godmothers’, or ‘mothers in law’, as we used to tease them (for DG TRADE, other DGs like mine and XIII / INFSO were also controllers as much as helpers!). So, we all worked together for two years, meeting several times per month in Brussels and in Geneva.
To make a long story short: I was amazed by Europe’s capacity to bring a deal around, bridging between the US, the emerging economies and the third world. Building on this large delegation, we were able to leverage cultural and business links to all parts of the world. Our processes were more complex than others, and there were some turf battles — ‘competence issues’, as lawyers and diplomats call them in a misleading way. But overall it was manageable and successful.
If this worked in the 1990’s without the Lisbon Treaty, it will work in the 2010’s even better.
Now my last anecdote, more recent and even more hopeful. Last July, on a personal fact-finding mission about Ukraine’s European perspective, I visited the EU Delegation in Kyiv. It had taken 24 hours to set-up a meeting, despite not sharing my host’s passport. And despite no answer to my contacts with the headquaters supposedly in charge in Brussels…
I was met by a young but competent official, not a Brussels Eurocrat but somebody with national and academic experience, clearly selected on merits. He knew all the relevant people, had little time but went right to the point. Off the record, he explained me the prerequisites for further EU integration, the options depending on elections, and how to structure the policy incentives for better behaviour of Ukrainain authorities. He was not just idealistic, which is good in principle, but also very conscious of the EU’s self interest. And he knew the importance of working with the media, in both Europe and Ukraine, in order to bring both public opinions closer.
Among my 10 meetings in Kyiv, that one at the EU Delegation was the best. *
This is the XXIst Century diplomacy we need!
Christophe Leclercq
(* I confess I didn’t try the national Embassies at that time and do commend the French monitoring webpages of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Embassy to the EU is also very helpful).