Strasbourg, 20/10/2009 (Agence Europe) - During a vote held on Monday evening in Strasbourg, the European Parliament's constitutional committee adopted the report by German Christian Democrat Elmar Brok on the European External Action Service (EEAS). The committee, which scrupulously followed the opinion of the rapporteur during the vote on the amendments, suggests the service should have a gradually developing vision to avoid any intergovernmental drift and to comply with Parliament prerogatives.
While the text prepared by Coreper with a view to the European Council on 29 and 30 October (EUROPE 999) underlines the fact that trade and development must continue to come under the responsibility of commissioners and specific directorate generals at the European Commission, the constitutional committee underlines that the EEAS must be established gradually “in light of experience” and that it cannot be fully defined in advance or predetermined. The parliamentary committee has not, however, agreed to follow Belgian Liberal Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroek, who wished to mention that enlargement, trade, development and humanitarian aid together form a substantial part of EU external policies. Ms Neyts-Uyttebroek added that there are “compelling reasons” to include development policy in the new service. The constitutional committee also subscribes to a formula similar to that of member state representatives by placing civilian and military crisis management units under the authority of the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, while recognising that civil and military command and organisation structures may be different from each other.
The report recommends that the current Commission delegations and Council representation functions should be merged together to form “Union embassies”. Those at the head of such embassies should be appointed on the basis of parliamentary hearings. They should be accountable to the relevant parliamentary committee. Joint diplomatic training may be provided for future members of the EEAS at a European diplomatic college. This training would also cover procedural aspects. The text underlines that the personnel of these future embassies should be entitled to issue Schengen visas, which would ease the burden on national representations. The report also speaks of representation of the various directorates general within these embassies. The Parliament, also, should have contact persons, for example for developing parliamentary contacts in third countries (amendment by German Christian Democrat Hans-Gert Pöttering).
The report underlines the need to strike a balance in personnel recruitment, in terms of proficiency, origin (Commission, Council, member states) and even gender. It trusts that the EEAS will be governed by Commission procedures in order to avoid any intergovernmental shift. Thus, if, like Coreper, the parliamentary committee sees the EEAS as a sui generis service from a budgetary and organisational point of view, it nonetheless considers that it must be “totally incorporated into the Commission's administrative structure” (member state representatives took a stance in favour of an EEAS totally separate from the Commission and Council). In order to ensure cohesion within the service, special attention should be paid to the status of personnel and to their careers. The Parliament, which should take a position by codecision on any amendment to the status of the officials, thus holds an important lever to ensure the EEAS functions as it should, Elmar Brok points out. Another lever is provided by decisions relating to EEAS financing which, in his view, requires changes to the interinstitutional agreement on budgetary discipline and amendment of the financial regulation.
The Brok report will be examined by the plenary session, on Wednesday afternoon. Voting will be held on Thursday. Parliament thus hopes foreign ministers will be able to take this into account during next Monday's preparation of the European Council scheduled for 29 and 30 June. (O.J./transl.jl)