The European Union  has 136 embassies abroad, including seven representations to international organisations. After the summer break, when the European External Action Service (EEAS) is supposed to begin its work in earnest, they will become the frontline of the EU’s new diplomatic corps. But their remit, staffing, internal set-up and reporting lines to Brussels are still being fought over by member states and the European Commission. 

At present, more than 1,100 officials and around 4,300 other employees, most of them locally hired contract workers, have jobs in the delegations. They are all hired by the Commission, which manages the delegations. Once the EEAS has been established, the delegations will become an integral part of the new diplomatic service. But officials in the delegations will not all have the same employer, even if they are governed by a single staff regulation. (The revision of the staff regulation has to be agreed between the Commission and the staff unions, and then endorsed by member states and the European Parliament.)

Staff working on core foreign policy and security matters will be transferred to the EEAS. Officials working on issues that fall within the responsibility of the Commission will remain Commission officials. This primarily concerns officials working in international trade, development co-operation, humanitarian aid, neighbourhood policy and pre-accession assistance. In many delegations, the number of people in this category far exceeds those in narrower diplomatic functions. According to Poul Skytte Christoffersen, a senior official overseeing preparations for the EEAS, there are about 400 “real” diplomats in the delegations at present.

The heads of delegations will, by definition, be members of the EEAS. Under this year’s rotation of senior Commission officials, there are 29 vacancies for heads of delegations and three for deputy heads coming up. They will be filled following a slightly modified Commission procedure, with two member states’ representatives on the Commission selection panels. But the member states have made it clear that, before the EEAS has even come into existence, they want a significant share of those appointed to come from the ranks of their own diplomats.

The Commission has received around 1,100 applications for these positions from some 600 individuals, according to an official involved in the preparations.

From now on, the heads of delegations will often be senior national diplomats seconded to the service, in order to reach the goal of around one-third of EEAS staff coming from member states.

This has given rise to concerns in some quarters. Mario Pino, the political secretary of Démocratie et Renouveau, a staff union, says that it is “very important” for the EEAS and the Commission to have a single disciplinary system. The demand has been taken up by the Commission in its draft amendments to the staff regulation. But this does not address the problem of how to deal with disciplinary proceedings against seconded EEAS staff who have returned to their national diplomatic service. The fear is that disciplinary proceedings might be thwarted or sidestepped if an official were transferred from one service to another.

Dealing with instructions

Another problem concerns lines of accountability. Given that in many delegations, Commission staff – for example, working on trade matters or development co-operation – outnumber traditional diplomats, should they still report to, and take instructions from, the head of delegation? The member states clearly think so, but the Commission has won a concession whereby heads of delegation are merely copied in on instructions sent from Commission departments to their staff in the field.

This differs from the model adopted by most national diplomatic services, under which instructions from ministries to their officials working in embassies are routed through the ambassador, whose sign-off is required before they are implemented.

While some officials are playing down the importance of this seemingly arcane procedural detail, the arrangement could create awkward situations if instructions are different to the political line taken by the EEAS. “This is a recipe for confusion,” says Alexander Lambsdorff, a German Liberal MEP.

Added value

A split has emerged among member states that want the delegations to begin offering consular services at some point in the future and those that oppose this. A diplomat from a smaller member state said that his government had insisted on including the possibility in the decision to establish the EEAS. However, the text that received the member states’ backing on Monday (26 April) only allows consular services if they can be provided at no additional cost, which is unrealistic. This was a concession to the UK, which goes to the polls next week (6 May). Its diplomats said that the outgoing government could not endorse using taxpayers’ money to provide services for citizens of other EU member states.

A senior diplomat from one of the Union’s smaller member states said that providing consular services would offer “added value for the man in the street”. Another member-state diplomat said: “I can imagine the headlines if there were another tsunami somewhere and the EU delegation did nothing to assist EU citizens affected by it.”

He said that the EU delegations “had to be on the frontline” in such emergencies. This particular battle may already be lost.

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