Brussels, 29/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - It has been long and sometimes painful but ultimately the timetable has been met: the European External Action Service (EEAS), for which the Lisbon Treaty made provision, to make EU foreign policy more effective, visible and coordinated will be officially launched on Wednesday 1 December. The event will be marked by a meeting in Brussels of the heads of all 130 EU delegations throughout the world for whom EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and head of the EEAS Catherine Ashton will set out the new Service's priorities.
Still no staff or headquarters. The official launch of the EEAS one year to the day after the Lisbon Treaty came into force will not mean that the Service is fully up and running. Far from it. It will only be the top management that will take up office on 1 December: Frenchman Pierre Vimont as Executive Secretary General, Irishman David O'Sullivan as Chief Operating Officer (in charge of the day-to-day administrative operations of the Service), and Pole Maciej Popowski and German Helga Schmid as Deputy Secretaries General. Their main task, at least in the short term, will be to continue work on the internal structure and operations of the EEAS. The heads of the Service's six geographical and thematic directorates general (the policy board) will be appointed by Ashton before the end of the year. The EEAS will still not, however, have its own staff. Without agreement on the EU 2011 budget - which has a separate budget line for the diplomatic service - officials from DG Relex at the European Commission and from the Council Secretariat cannot be transferred to the EEAS. They will, then, continue to work for their respective institutions until the 2011 budget and their transfer to the EEAS are approved.
The diplomatic service does not have its own headquarters either. An agreement is believed to have been reached in October on siting the headquarters in the “Triangle” building at the Schuman Roundabout but the contract has yet to be signed. Barring upsets, the matter will be settled “very soon” and the EEAS will have completed its move into its new premises by summer 2011, our sources say.
This all means that the effect of the coming on stream of the EEAS on EU external action will in the short term, be negligible. “There will be no political change on Wednesday. It will be a very smooth, progressive transition” towards a fully operational EEAS, well informed sources have revealed. (H.B./transl.rt)