Brussels, 08/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - The permanent representatives of the Member States of the EU (Coreper) will hold an initial exchange of views on Thursday on work underway to set up the “European External Action Service” (EEAS) once the Constitutional Treaty enters into force. The debate will be based on a joint note by the EU's High Representative for CFSP, Javier Solana, and the President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso. EUROPE has reason to believe that this note (which will be followed over the next few months with a more detailed progress report to be submitted to the June European Council by Mr Solana and Mr Barroso) greatly stresses the need to ensure the coherence of the EU's external activities, to avoid duplicating responsibilities and to help the future European Foreign Minister to carry out his or her mission with the greatest possible competence. In line with article III-296 (3) of the Constitutional Treaty, the EEAS will work together with the diplomatic services of the Member States. It will be made up of officials from the competent services of the Secretariat General of the Council and of the European Commission, and seconded staff from the national diplomatic services on the Member States.
The Treaty makes no specific provision for the institutional foundation and the internal organisation of the future EEAS, mentioning only an innovative sui generis solution with the creation of a “new integrated service”. At this point, the main question is just how autonomous the EEAS should be: should it be completely separate from the Commission and the Secretariat General of the Council, or should it be partially attached to both of them? On this, the joint note gives no clear answer at this stage. In the meantime, the European Parliament seems in favour of including the EEAS within the Commission services. The President of the committee on foreign affairs of the EP, Elmar Brok (CDU), has prepared a draft resolution calling for the European diplomatic service to be “logistically, administratively and budgetarily full integrated into the services of the Commission”.
Apart from where it will lie within the institutions, the exact definition of the scope of the responsibility of the future European diplomatic service will also be crucial. On this, the note by Messrs Solana and Barroso pleads for the services currently in charge of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and the European security and defence policy (ESDP), including military staff, to be an integral part of the EEAS. The inclusion of the situation centre (SITCEN), the EU's early warning system in the field of crisis management, could pose more problems due to its multiple functions, the authors of the report fear. This point will therefore require more thought. The Secretariat General of the Council and the Commission agree that the EEAS should be capable of providing unified policy advice not only to the European foreign minister, but also to other European Commissioners and the future President of the European Council. This, Mr Solana and Mr Barroso feel, calls for the European diplomatic service to have geographical desks to cover all the countries and all the regions of the world. There should be no duplication of effort in these “desks” either within the services of the European Commission nor the Secretariat General of the Council. However, this should not stop the Commission from carrying out its intentions of organising its directorates general in other sectors which do not fall directly under the competency of the EEAS, such as trade, development policy, the management of financial assistance programmes to third countries or accession negotiations. According to the two authors, the specific nature of these subjects would exclude them a priori from the EEAS. Alongside the geographical “desks”, the EEAS will also have thematic units given over to issues such as human rights, counter-terrorism, non-proliferation and relations between the EU and international organisations. Due to the growing importance of the European Parliament, the EEAS will also have a service in charge of relations with the EP.
The Constitutional Treaty also provides for the EU to establish EU delegations in third countries, under the aegis of the foreign minister. This raises the question of whether these EU delegations should come under the EEAS. The note does not provide a definitive answer to this question, but seems nonetheless to favour the option of total integration into the EEAS. In any case, it is important to ensure that representatives of all the European institutions in third countries are part of a “single structure”, which will be provided by the Community delegations, Mr Solana and Mr Barroso state. They also suggest that more thought be given to the role the Community delegations could play in terms of consular protection and possibly the issuing of visas and other services.
European Parliament Plenary Session