Luxembourg, 25/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 25 October, the Foreign Affairs Council definitively adopted the three legal texts which are vital for the new European External Action Service (EEAS) to be created. These are the financial regulation, the staff regulations and the budget the 2010. These three texts had been approved by the European Parliament last week.
Pierre Vimont, David O'Sullivan. Immediately after the Council's vote, the high representative of the EU for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, officially revealed the names of the two people who will lead the European diplomatic service: Pierre Vimont of France will hold the post of Executive Secretary General, with Ireland's David O'Sullivan as Chief Operating Officer, with responsibility for the day-to-day administrative management of the EEAS. The two deputy secretaries general to support Vimont in the political management of the service will be appointed in the next few days. They will most likely be Germany's Helga Schmid (head of the policy unit at the Council Secretariat) and Poland's Maciej Popowski (former Polish ambassador to COPS and current head of Private Office to the president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek).
Vimont is currently France's ambassador to the United States. As a former representative to the EU (notably during the French Presidency in 2000), he clearly has a great deal of European experience. Amongst other positions, O'Sullivan held the post of head of Private Office to President Romano Prodi and is a former secretary general of the Commission. The two men complement each other perfectly, according to sources close to the dossier. By dint of his experience, Vimont will primarily take charge of relations with the Council and the member states. O'Sullivan, whose knowledge of the European Commission is virtually unparalleled, will focus more on contact with the European executive, even though the main objective is to have in place a “collegial directorate” of the EEAS under the authority of Ashton, according to our sources. “I promised to select the brightest and the best and in Pierre Vimont as the Executive Secretary General and David O'Sullivan as Chief Operating Officer, I have done just that (…). In their respective roles, they will help to create a European diplomatic service that the people of Europe could be proud of”, Ashton commented in Luxembourg on Monday. (H.B./transl.fl)