Recent discussions over the future of the European External Action Service (EEAS) do not come as a surprise. Tensions have run deep since the launch of this institutional innovation meant to underpin the work of the EU’s Foreign and Security Policy chief, and its architects knew at the time they would not be able to outright dispel them.
The different scripts to theory and practice of the new EU foreign policy machine go back to the Working Group VII on External Action of the European Convention in 2002/2003. Back then, heated discussions surfaced inter-institutional rivalries between supranational and intergovernmental foreign policy visions, smaller and larger member states, and on the type of personality needed at the top.
No doubt, at this time of great disruption, the EEAS must prove its added value. It has a good track record where its mandate is clear: in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme leading to the JCPOA, for example, and, more recently, in preparing EU sanctions and implementing military assistance to Ukraine.
Clearly, national leaders want to keep the upper hand on foreign and security matters given these are much more likely to be of vital interest, and at times, of existential nature. The issue is not whether the Commission or the EEAS will win the institutional rivalry, but to what extent capitals continue to give breathing space to either of them.
Right now, any wider reform proposals for the EEAS will inevitably re-surface institutional battles between and within the institutions and European capitals. That is the last thing Europeans should want with a global audience watching and waiting for Europeans to get bogged down yet again in their internal unfinished business.
Almut Möller is Director for European and Global Affairs and head of the Europe in the World programme at the European Policy Centre.
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