All eyes are focussed at the moment on the new EU diplomatic corps. The European Parliament debated it at the end of last week, EU foreign ministers will discuss it this very afternoon ahead of the EU Summit that will be discussing the matter later this week. In Paris on Thursday, the current EU High Representative, Javier Solana, explained the significance of the new EU body. He said that developing a common EU foreign and security policy was 'the main innovation under the Lisbon Treaty - pooling the EU's traditional diplomatic resources and placing them under the authority of a single politician, thereby guaranteeing more effectiveness on the world stage. (…) The challenge is to set up the very first global diplomatic network, backed by the military and civilian resources of the 27 Member States and with an EU foreign affairs action budget of €50 billion by 2013 (…) This will give our relationship with the United States and Russia more teeth, make our relationship with China and India more compact, and our relationship with Africa and Latin America more based on solidarity.' These comments back the strong idea that the new EU diplomatic corps' composition, operations and powers will largely determine the future of EU foreign policy (see this column in issue 10,000 of this newsletter).
The EP - openness and a firm stand. It is good that the European Parliament wanted to express its views on all areas of the new EU diplomatic corps by examining the ins and outs. Rapporteur Elmar Brok explained that there were two reasons for this: a) to avert the danger of the common EU foreign policy being over-founded on the Intergovernmental Method and; b) ensuring right from the start that the European Parliament will have its say in how the foreign policy is managed, especially because the EP will only have a consultation role when the final decisions are taken about the diplomatic corps' composition and operations.
Without commenting on the details of the EP's resolution, we note that the EP has moved away from the position that is emerging within the Council of Ministers, particularly when it calls for the diplomatic crops to be incorporated within the European Commission's administrative structure and for its budget to be annexed to the Commission's budget. It is too soon to talk about a serious conflict because the resolution leaves the door open to compromise: in paragraph 14, it calls for the final draft of the diplomatic corps to essentially match the guidelines set out by the EP, adding that if a different compromise solution were to be reached, then it should be reached 'by consensus, through inter-institutional contact involving the Parliament'. The EP will have two weapons at its disposal in these 'contacts,' namely its budgetary powers and its ability to reject the High Representative's appointment (when he or she is appointed, at the same time as the Commission President and Vice-President). The Council is prepared to meet the other EP demands set out in the previous issue of our newsletter. Common policies to be protected. The most complicated area to manage will be how the diplomatic corps' powers will interact with the powers the European Commission already holds in areas closely related to foreign policy like foreign trade, development, EU enlargement, transport and energy. The EP is calling for the Commission's prerogatives to be protected - the EU nature of the new and existing policies must not be watered down. The EP is vaguer about other areas still under discussion at the Council of Ministers, and is taking a prudent approach to how the diplomatic corps is to be composed (like the proportion of EU civil servants to national diplomats).
Overall, I do not get the impression of a fundamental conflict emerging between the EP and the guidelines to be submitted to the European Council at the end of the week. I am aware that some European Union affairs purists are saying that the Member States are trying to set up an 'intergovernmental' foreign office, independent of the Commission and subject to the control of the EP. Some of them might be aiming at this, but not the European Council as a whole. The new High Representative, who will be drafting the final plans for the diplomatic corps and appointing its members, will be Vice-President of the European Commission and as such will be subject to the parliamentary approval procedures. We should not forget that the EP does not actually have any real powers over foreign policy at the moment over and above the voting through of sometimes pointless and often contradictory resolutions. It does not even have any powers over trade policy.
When the diplomatic corps comes into being, the powers of both the European Commission and the European Parliament on CFSP and CFDP will be far greater and spread much wider than they do at the moment.
(F.R. trans fl)