The EU’s diplomatic service under the leadership of Kaja Kallas is facing an unprecedented bout of internal turmoil – exposing existential questions about whether the bloc’s foreign policy machinery is fit for purpose.
Created under the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the European External Action Service (EEAS) was designed as a compromise between Brussels and national capitals: strong enough to coordinate diplomacy on behalf of the EU’s governments collectively, independently of the European Commission, but weak enough not to threaten national foreign ministries.
Caught between capitals and Commission
Over 15 years later, officials across the EU institutions say that compromise is increasingly under strain.
“There should be fewer intrigues between and inside the European Commission and the External Action Service,” former Estonian foreign minister and current MEP Urmas Paet told Euractiv. “It looks really ridiculous with burning issues around the world.”
The EEAS occupies an awkward place in the EU’s institutional architecture: formally independent, yet politically tethered to both the Commission and the member states. The tension is embodied in the “double hatted” office held by Kallas as simultaneously both the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, or HRVP for short.
“It’s always been difficult because it’s a bit of a duck-billed platypus,” said James Moran, a former EU Ambassador and now associate senior research fellow at CEPS, a Brussels think tank.
Officials inside the EEAS complain privately that the Berlaymont has increasingly encroached on its territory, while Commission officials reject suggestions of a deliberate power grab.
One EU diplomat argued that the growing overlap between geopolitics and economic policy has inevitably shifted power toward the Commission.
“If you want to regulate Big Tech … you need the involvement of institutional actors outside the classical foreign and security political circles” the diplomat said.
The diplomat described the EEAS as “a bit of an unwelcomed child” from its conception – caught between member states reluctant to surrender foreign policy control and a Commission wary of empowering an institution too closely tied to national capitals.
Furthermore, EU countries have been upset with an initiative by Kallas to war-game the EU’s own 42.7 mutual assistance clause – fearing that it might trigger a strong response from Washington and further jeopardise NATO.
Whose mandate? Who speaks for EU?
“Where they have a mandate, they deliver. The problem is that it is a very enigmatic institution with a rather weak mandate,” said Juraj Majcin, a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, an EU affairs think tank in Brussels.
Majcin pointed to recent security partnerships with countries such as India and Australia as examples of areas where the EEAS has functioned effectively. But he argued that the institution still struggles to define its place inside the EU system.
“As long as the treaty applies, there will be a European External Action Service,” Moran said, adding that its efficacy depends on leadership and member states’ willingness to act collectively.
Earlier this week, Kallas put herself forward to play the leading role in potential future negotiations with Russia, prompting a debate that highlights the EEAS’s wider political problems.
Officials and analysts have questioned whether the EU foreign policy chief has either the political backing or institutional mandate for such a role.
Majcin argued Kallas had put “the cart ahead of the horse” by publicly pitching herself before securing broad backing from national governments, which are discussing other candidates, most likely a former or serving head of state or government, to serve as an envoy if there are talks with Putin.
Moran suggested a middle ground may ultimately emerge, where the EEAS plays a coordinating role while member states and national leaders retain political control over the most sensitive negotiations.
One senior Commission official noted that the discussion itself is a clear marker of the political limitations to any role for the HRVP.
“The unsaid part being: not Kallas,” said the source.
See the original report from Magnus Lund Nielsen here.