After a long absence, mainly due to the author's overload of work (combining professional obligations with two Masters' programs at the same time is no easy task), Foreign Policy Watch is ready to go again. To start the revival, I will reuse a paper I presented a month ago for my Master's in European Studies.
After reading a rather uninspiring -- just another article criticising the EEAS and the EU's seemingly non-existant foreign policy, so nothing new here -- piece on the European External Action Service on Project Syndicate, I have thought it would be nice sharing my alternative, rather positive view of probable policy spillovers that we could witness as the youthful and insecure EEAS hopefully matures into a more stable and decisive body. Enjoy!
The EEAS revolution: the role of the European External Action Service in promoting accountability in foreign policy and deepening the European integration process
Abstract
With less than one year of existence under its belt, the European External Action Service is still in the process of becoming a full-fledged reality. Any analysis of the current state of affairs and predictions about its future evolution will be inconclusive.
However, it is not too early to discern the positive developments its inception and successive growth will surely bring about to both the European Union and the world of diplomacy: widening the diplomatic agenda to include new global issues, reinforcing democratic accountability and accelerating the European integration process could be three of the overarching consequences of a correct and comprehensive implementation of the new EU foreign service.
Introduction
Despite the fact that it only makes a brief appearance in Article 27.3 of the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on 1 December 2009, the inception of an European External Action Service is one of the most important innovations included in the failed Constitutional Treaty and rescued in the Lisbon Treaty in the area of Common Foreign and Security Policy.
A direct consequence from the implicit recognition, both in the 2003 European Security Strategy and its 2008 implementation review, that EU Member States are no longer in position to face the threats and challenges of a rapidly changing world order by themselves[1], the main goal of this new European foreign service is – as stated in the Treaty – assisting the double-hatted High Representative in fulfilling her multiple tasks while acting in coordination with national foreign service corps.
Being neither part of the European Commission nor of the Council, the EEAS – which, after the Parliament Decision of 8 July and the Council Decision from 26 July 2010, was officially launched on the symbolic date of the one-year anniversary of the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty (1 December 2010) – will still be dominated by officials coming from both institutions, while also adding a significant number of seconded officials coming from the diplomatic services and the foreign ministries of the 27 Member States (which will conform at least 1/3 of the total work force of the EEAS). They are currently being dispatched to the almost 140 EU Delegations across the world, as well as staff the headquarters in Brussels, organized in regional and thematic desks.
Generally speaking, the European External Action Service (EEAS), now at the start of a 5-year plan to become one of the world’s biggest diplomatic corps, represents a significant opportunity to enhance the EU’s foreign policy making capabilities (Whitman, 2010) based upon a more comprehensive and effective use of its vast resources and an increasingly strategic approach towards the definition and implementation of the relevant instruments. Its potential relevance explains the profusion of literature focused on how the EEAS can improve the strategic decision-making, horizontal and vertical coherence, visibility, effectiveness and efficiency of EU external action.[2] However, other potentially beneficial aspects, that we could consider the spillover effect of the new diplomatic actor, have seldom been considered among scholastic circles.
Therefore, this paper will focus on identifying and defining the scope of three related positive developments, both affecting the EU and the international community, that we envision will come hand in hand with the EEAS: the inclusion of new issues in the global diplomatic agenda, the reinforcement of the accountability and legitimacy of EU foreign policy (with its possible spillover to the methods employed by other democratic actors) and the potential of the EEAS as a tool to deepen European integration. Both the origin and the possible evolution of these developments will be explained based on existent information about the EEAS extracted from official EU documentation and scholastic papers.
New global issues in the diplomatic agenda
What can the European External Action Service, a supranational diplomatic corps representing a postmodern confederation of states and 500 millions of citizens, bring to the table of global diplomacy? The answer lies in a basic evaluation of the main characteristics and capabilities of the EU as an international actor.
Economic power, civilian power and cultural power characterize the strengths of the European Union at the international level. While it has been able to comprehensively exploit its large economic leverage, the projection of civilian and cultural power – key elements in order to consider the EU as a truly normative power – has lagged far behind its economic status. In order to maximize its international visibility and better project its soft power, the EU Member States decided to create the EEAS, a structural diplomatic body, focusing on world governance issues – the environment, human rights, human security, democracy promotion, etc. – while also including some elements of traditional diplomacy.
This duality faithfully reflects the two hats the High Representative wears: the Council’s, representing the traditional interstate diplomacy, and the Council, father of the postmodern identity of the EU and responsible for the structural diplomacy elements of the EEAS – whose delegations will receive orders from the Commission in the fields it has competence (Priego, 2011).
However, the key differential element of the EEAS should be multiplying the EU’s capacity to project its soft power and the views upon which it is based. Taking an active role in world diplomacy via a pan-European, non-traditional foreign service will help the EU in its goal of including emerging global challenges – such as climate change or sustainable development, as well as human rights promotion[3] – and pushing up their priority among the ever-conservative world of diplomacy.
Making Europe’s voice heard also involves being innovative and actively defending the Union’s principles. By bringing a breath of fresh air to the international diplomatic agenda, the EU will also reinforce its own global, united position and become more assertive and effective in international negotiations related to global governance issues.[4]
Reinforcing the accountability, legitimacy and transparency of EU foreign policy
A traditional weak point (or, some would argue, strength) of national foreign policy structures has been political and democratic accountability, as well as transparency over the policies pursued and their implementation methods. Even if foreign ministers are accountable to the national parliaments and can be replaced by governmental decision, the overall apparatus, including the diplomatic corps, have famously been independent from political and public scrutiny.
Will that also be the case with the EEAS? Although Bátora (2010) asserts that democratic accountability has been overlooked in the process of defining the functioning of the EEAS[5], many signals point towards yet another first of the EU-way. Modern foreign policy should, despite the resistance from diplomatic circles, be compatible with the democratic accountability and decision-making processes. In order to do that, the EEAS should resist isomorphic pressures putting emphasis on plain effectiveness – to the detriment of transparency and democratic accountability – and acknowledge the fact that modern democracies, ruled by the growing interconnectedness of internal and external policy, don’t consider democratic accountability and foreign policy effectiveness as being incompatible.
If a global actor is especially ready to accept this principle, it must be the EU[6]: a supranational actor with a newly conferred legal personality (officially, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty) whose external action, as detailed on Article 21 TEU, is meant to focus on the very same values inherent to the European project, including promoting democratic values and good governance. In other words, the EU should lead by example, and the sheer visibility of its foreign service – with almost 140 delegations all over the world – should make its own democratic accountability and legitimacy – both to internal EU publics and external stakeholders –a key concern, capable of defining the whole sustainability of the European foreign action.
Despite the concerns expressed by authors as Bátora, the European Parliament has made sure that its influence and supervisory role of the EEAS went far beyond of approving its budget – in itself an already influential control mechanism.[7] Political and democratic accountability of the EEAS vis-à-vis the EU institution that basically gives democratic legitimacy to the EU also encompasses the direct supervision of the two Deputy Secretary Generals and the Chief Operating Officer[8], gained on the negotiations – the so-called Quadrilogues – following the rejection by both the Commission and the European Parliament of Baroness Ashton’s first proposal for the structure and composition of the EEAS, presented on 25 March 2010, that culminated with the Madrid four-party agreement in June.
Moreover, the agreement also included direct scrutiny over new Heads of Delegation (i.e. EU Ambassadors), as the High Representative accepted, duties after the Barroso-Vale de Almeida controversy[9], that any appointed Ambassador would appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament before taking up his/her duties. Finally, the European Parliament also asked the Lady Ashton to prepare a Declaration on Political Accountability defining the main lines of cooperation between the Parliament, the High Representative and the EEAS. The result is an agreement between the institutions that provides a solid ground for cooperation and parliamentary scrutiny.
Policy communication is, together with its formulation and implementation, also a key element to attain public legitimacy and accountability, both among internal and external publics. This is the reason why, once again in an unprecedented move in the diplomatic sphere, the EEAS had to possess its own media service. However, looking at the online news site one cannot, as of June 2011, detect much activity, the latest news being from a year ago and the most relevant links bringing the user straight to the Council press website and the EU general press room. The impossibility to confirm whether this lack of activity is due to the still ongoing building of the service or due to its premature abandonment would make criticism inappropriate. However, it would be a shame that, in the era of accountability via open, easily accessible information, the EU decided not to implement an already-planned media outlet to communicate the policies pursued and executed by the EEAS to all stakeholders.
Despite this possible misstep, and taking into account the current state of affairs, the fact that the EEAS will play, together with the Commission and the High Representative, a leading role in strategic decision making concerning key foreign policy instruments such as the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, the Development Cooperation Instrument or the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, among others, has to be seen as a positive development for greater transparency and democratic accountability. Cooperation with the relevant Commission DGs will be intense and, although there are concerns about the delays in policy definition and implementation this could imply, visibility, transparency and efficiency will surely benefit from it.
We can, therefore, see an EEAS that, in its dual role of serving both the EU member states and the EU’s interests, will act as a cosmopolitan normative entrepreneur with multilevel and multipronged accountability, both vis-à-vis internal and external stakeholders (Bátora, 2010), built around human security principles and developing multilevel channels of communication (Martin, 2009).
The EEAS as a tool for deepening European integration
As Galeziak (2011) points out, the EU is able to deploy most foreign policy instruments any national actor could make use of, but seemingly still lacks the will to employ them strategically and coherently. Could the EEAS act as a unifying organization that helps lead reluctant Member States into the fold of EU foreign policy? Could it foster further integration? The answer to these questions should be affirmative.
Most scholars agree that the transversal role the EEAS will play can and should bring greater coherence both at the horizontal (i.e. among EU institutions) and vertical (i.e. between the EU and its Member States). From that, and also taking into account its particular organizational structure and certain innovations of the Lisbon Treaty, we can infer that it will become a tool for deepening political integration and reinforcement of the community method, with clear spillovers into the foreign policy arena. In other words, if the CFSP has been widely considered the first step towards a politically integrated EU, the EEAS could well be the second.
As Whitman (2010) points out, the 2009 Swedish Presidency advanced the notion of the EEAS as a sui generis body, separate from the Commission and the Council Secretariat. Such an approach introduced two challenges for the EEAS to overcome: inter-institutional competition and integration. While the first has already been settled with the Quadrilogues that took place during the first semester of 2010, the issue of integration is still unresolved.
The EEAS will reunite actors from the Member States, the Council and the Commission under the same roof. While this can lead to tensions, it is also a unique opportunity to promote mutual understanding between the quintessential community institution, the arm of the Member States in Brussels and foreign officials of the Member States themselves, thus creating synergies at the horizontal and vertical levels. To put it more graphically, people who worked on different documents for a same region or topic will now work together, reviewing inputs from the Commission and the Council to improve implementation and be more coherent and strategic.[10]
This positive conclusion can be reached via the application of basic principles of social psychology: the concepts of group belonging and self-identity, intimately interconnected and closely linked to the professional sphere in which the relevant subjects develop their careers. As Tajfel and Turner’s (1986) social identity theory points out, each individual defines himself in terms of belonging to a social group and looks for a positive social identity. Although this can be seen as a double edge sword – works of these authors show that small differences can provoke conflicts between groups –, conflicts due to the fact that the staff of the EEAS originated from different groups should be overcome by the osmotic absorption of the dominant in-group rules and identities of the new organization.
Organizations of all natures have a certain operational culture and identity which is, in its turn, transmitted to all its members, shaping their professional identity. In the case of the EEAS, this carries two important implications. First, the culture and identity adopted by this new organization will shape the decisions and working procedures it will adopt, a crucial aspect in a supranational entity as the EU, where different ways of operating – mainly the community/supranational and the intergovernmental methods – coexist.
In the case of the EEAS, a newly created organization, the distinctive institutional identity will necessarily derive from three main organizations: the Commission, the Council, and the national diplomatic services. As Ongaro (2010) points out, two mechanisms will determine this transfer of routines: identities traveling with the staff from their former environments and the adoption of new routines via systematic contacts with other organizations with consolidated routines.
Taking into account that most EEAS staff has been transferred from the Commission and that former employees of both the Council and the Commission come, despite their different procedural methods and environments (see above), from the same supranational entity and bureaucratic machine, the most plausible is that a novel set of routines, stemming primarily from the Commission but also influenced by Council identities, will take hold.[11]
This has, subsequently, a clear implication as far as organizational culture is concerned: the community method will prevail in the collective image of the EEAS. Implications of this could be wide-ranging, one of them being that the key body of EU representation and foreign policy implementation would probably tend to implicitly prioritize internally and externally coherent and cohesive policies. As the EEAS will have a key role in the foreign policy-making process, the logical outcome should be recommendations that prioritize the Union’s view over possible diverging interests of the Member States, thus creating a down top effect to further integration.
Additionally, as pointed out by Quille (2010), the Lisbon Treaty also reinforces the role of EU Member States in the areas of CFSP policy planning, formulation and implementation. Although seemingly contradictory with a reinforced, more coherent EU foreign action, and even further from the prospects of deepening integration, multilateral and multilevel governance of foreign policy issues could help reduce the inherent fear national political and diplomatic elites have towards the loss of sovereignty in the realm of external policy.
In its turn, this direct participation in EU policies would give the states a greater sense of ownership in EU policies and reinforce their confidence in Brussels structures – namely the High Representative and the EEAS –, which should increasingly feel and be entitled to design and execute the CFSP on behalf of all Member States.[12] In other words, this apparent step back could create strong synergies that would let the European Union take several steps forward in the political integration process.
The European External Action Service should provide continuous bottom-up analysis simultaneously to the EU institutions and Member States, which will favor common positions of the Union, in particular with regard to matters of a geographical or thematic nature. This will, in its turn, facilitate the convergence of Member States’ national interests and the emergence of a truly common foreign policy (de Vasconcelos, 2010).
A final aspect that should be taken into account, a combination of conjectural and structural factors, would be the probable downscaling of the diplomatic corps of several Member States. Smaller European countries, with limited foreign policy budgets and already without diplomatic representation in many countries, can have a natural tendency to rely on ever more efficient and able EU delegations to service their citizens.[13] This logical tendency can be amplified by a conjectural factor that is affecting many European countries: the debt crisis, which obviously affects national spending. One of the budget allocations where cuts would carry less political and social cost is, quite obviously, foreign affairs. Therefore, budgetary restraints, combined with a display of reliability and efficiency by EU delegations, could only accelerate this downscaling process.
Conclusions
With just a few months of life under its belt and its structure still far from being fully developed, any analysis of the accomplishments of the EEAS until now will be far from relevant or fair.
However, initial trends can easily come to shape future developments, thus making it relevant to trace the first steps of this new CFSP instrument. Specifically designed to assist the High Representative in its tasks, both at the Headquarters in Brussels and in the almost 200 delegations the EU has abroad, the EEAS could play a key role in reverting two of the most criticized aspects of EU foreign action: its lack of cohesion and coherence, both at the vertical (i.e. between the EU and its member states) and horizontal (i.e. between the different EU institutions and policies) levels.
Such improvements will create synergies that, in its turn, could have a spillover effect that would advance political integration at the European level, promote democratic accountability and legitimacy for the European foreign policy and effectively push for the introduction of new and relevant topics into global diplomatic debates.
Being dependent of both the Commission and the Council, although namely with a stronger output from the former, the EEAS is well positioned to build stronger bridges between community policies and the still intergovernmental CFSP. This would create a culture of cooperation within the foreign policy structure that should reinforce the community idea. Moreover, greater direct participation by Member States could also work towards reducing their reluctance towards moving from a divisive intergovernmental approach towards a more integrated and coherent European foreign policy.
Strict adherence to the wording used in the treaties has been a contentious issue throughout CE/EU history. Although the Lisbon Treaties include clauses explicitly aimed at avoiding the natural expansion of community competences in the field of CFSP, some degree of gradual, seamless integration at that level cannot be ruled out. This does not imply that the EEAS will engulf national diplomatic missions anytime soon, but the expected role of support and coordination could evolve into a stronger leadership position, provided political will and momentum are found. The current economic crisis could also play a role, pushing smaller Member States to cede their diplomatic representation abroad to the relevant EU Delegations, thus accelerating the integrative process.
In a rapidly evolving international context, shaped by a seemingly unstoppable transfer of power from West to East, the EU and its member states should make sure to have one single voice in the international arena. It is no longer a matter of speaking louder: as we move forward ahead, uncoordinated European nations would surely struggle at even making their voices be heard.
Strengthening the role of the EEAS and, in turn, of the High Representative, could only be seen as a positive step towards a more unified Europe, projecting its soft civilian and normative power with greater effectiveness, both in its troubled immediate neighbourhood and further afield. Having a single and unconventional diplomatic voice will also help the EU in its goal of including emerging global challenges – such as climate change or sustainable development, as well as the respect for human rights – into the international diplomatic agenda, so far almost exclusively concerned with traditional transnational policy issues.
One of the most recognizable strengths of the EU is its comprehensive soft (civilian and economic) power, which should allow for an effective use of the less intrusive foreign policy instruments available: classic diplomacy, transformative diplomacy and cultural diplomacy. In order for the EU to optimize their use, the EEAS must surpass the limits of a CFSP that has so far been conceived on the basis of the minimum common denominator: only then will the EEAS harness all its potential as normative power and democratic legitimacy multiplicator, able to project and self-reinforce core EU values such as democracy and good governance.
However, it will only go as far as the Member States are willing it to go (Verluise, 2010). Although initial perspectives seemed to tilt towards the negative side – especially based on TEU Declarations 13 and 14[14], which considerably limited the margin of maneuvering of both the High Representative and the EEAS –, subsequent negotiations and developments allow for a much more positive outlook.
To sum it up, and using Priego’s (2011) words, the EEAS is a key step towards European integration that will strengthen the EU’s role as a global actor while transforming diplomacy itself.
[1] A vision reinforced in the document Project Europe 2030: Challenges and Opportunities, issued by the reflection group led by former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González and including 2 chapters (out of a total 9) devoted to EU foreign action, which asserted that the European Union must choose between becoming either a global agent of change or preparing for a managed decline into irrelevance. Moreover, the report also suggests the creation of a specific unit specializing in prevision and analysis inside the framework of the EEAS. [2] A non-exhaustive list would include works by Bátora (2008), Cellerino (2010), Missiroli (2007), Keukeleire and Smith (2010), Galeziak (2011), Gavas and Maxwell (2010), Quille (2010) or Verluise (2010). [3] Implicitly in line with this reasoning, the EEAS will include a specific Human Rights structure both at its headquarters in Brussels and in all relevant delegations abroad. [5] He even adds that the very composition of the service raised democratic issues already far before its final inception, as shown by the 2005 reports by the Commission and the Parliament mentioning the service could have a ‘life of its own’. [6] Even if we have to acknowledge that the EU itself faces problems of democratic accountability, which were however remarkably addressed in the Lisbon Treaty by heavily reinforcing the role of the European Parliament and also giving a voice to the national parliaments. [7] In fact, as commented by Quille (2010), Member States attempted to push forward a different structure to fund the EEAS, but the position of the European parliament – i.e. assigning it a separate budget line of the European Union – prevailed, thus being subject to the budgetary discharge rights of the European Parliament. [8] In this aspect, the often criticized vertical structure of the EEAS – chosen instead of a more horizontal approach – makes it possible for the European Parliament to exert a more direct and effective political supervision and control over the foreign service and its top officials. Moreover, as argued by Galeziak (2011), given the multitude of tasks the High Representative needs to fulfill, a strong figure – the Executive Secretary General – that will ensure the correct functioning of the Service and a second authority – the Chief Operating Officer – should provide a positive asset for the running of the Service. [9] In an extremely controversial move that allegedly did not have the agreement of the High Representative, Durao Barroso, the President of the Commission, appointed his fellow Portuguese and close collaborator, the Director-General for External Relations (RELEX), Mr Vale de Almeida, as Ambassador of the Union Delegation in Washington. [10] The fact that EEAS personnel come from three different sources should not be a major worry for them to acquire a shared culture: even the most powerful foreign service of our days, the US Foreign Service, divides its staff in three blocs according to their precedence. [11] Verluise (2010) gives us some detailed insight on the practical signification of this shared identity. According to the French analyst, the this invisible cultural cleavage will mean that the community culture, inherited from the DG Relex, will take hold in the geographic and thematic desks, as well as in the delegations, while the intergovernmental culture, stemming from the Council, will have a bigger weight in the semi-autonomous crisis management structures. [12] Ideally, the Member States will take decisions at the Council level based on the proposals – including those for military cooperation and resource pooling – presented by the High Representative and drafted in close cooperation with the EEAS (and the Commission when applicable). [13] It must be noted, however, that some commentators argue that this process can also naturally occur with other Member States’ embassies or consulates: nationals of any EU country, who are allowed to seek assistance from the diplomatic services of any EU Member State when abroad, can indeed choose the most reputed consulate – as far as efficiency and standards are concerned –, and not necessarily the EU delegation. [14] Declaration 13 states that the High Representative and the EEAS do not affect the responsibilities of the Member States as they currently exist, while Declaration 14 adds that the High Representative and the EEAS will not affect the existing legal basis, responsibilities, and powers of each Member State in relation to the formulation and conduct of its foreign policy, its national diplomatic service, relations with third countries and participation in international organizations.
Washington, assuming that any move to contact North Korea unilaterally could damage Seoul’s credibility and role in future negotiations – as also attested by South Korean officials and media, who claimed that Seoul should play the leading role in any negotiations at the first hint of a North Korea-U.S. meeting[1] –, probably leaked the plans, prompting a swift South Korean reaction: the first meeting on the sidelines with the DPRK had Seoul’s top nuclear envoy as the protagonist on July 22.
One more reason why Washington is not going to fall into Pyongyang's trap is its clear will to maintain a smooth military and security relationship with South Korea . With the main goal of preserving the current security status quo in East Asia by both deterring North Korea and hedging against the rapidly expanding Chinese military power, the Obama administration has been notably hawkish on this side of relations. The recent change of the chief of the 28,000 American troops stationed in Korea for a more battle-tested general attests that, under the Obama administration, the alliance has been reinforced. Equally telling is the fact that Lockheed Martin seems willing to outsource production of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and transfer stealth technology to Korea in case Seoul decides to buy such aircraft.[4] According to Lockheed’s Stephen O’Bryan, U.S. government has approved the production of the F-35 final assembly and checkout for Japanese assembly.[5] Even if the U.S. government will have the final say about the extent of technological transfer, Lockheed is optimistic about it. 
