The European Union's heavyweights have deployed their skirmishers, and now the battle lines are being drawn. The EU is currently trying to set up a brand-new diplomatic service, as mandated by the bloc's Lisbon Treaty, which came into force in December.
The effort has led to a turf war between member states and the EU's executive, the European Commission, as each side tries to stamp its authority on the first new EU body in 50 years. "The starting point for all this is that this is building something new, and three major institutions are concerned: the commission, the member states and the European Parliament," one top EU diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The so-called External Action Service (EAS) is meant to function as a fully-fledged diplomatic service, projecting the EU's political and economic influence around the world and gathering information on the moves and intentions of other international players.
But the commission already carries out some of those tasks as the manager of the EU's shared budget, which includes roughly 30 billion euros (41 billion dollars) over six years for aid and development issues, and the manager of over 130 bureaux around the world. And the question of who should now control what has sparked a tug of war between member states and the commission.
"There are issues about where the border lines lie between the EAS and the commission, and it should be no surprise that these are now coming to the surface," the diplomat said. The task of setting up the EAS falls to the EU's new foreign-policy director, Catherine Ashton, who is both vice-president of the commission and representative of the EU's 27 member states.
Last week she presented three working papers on how she thinks the EAS should function to member states and the commission. She is expected to make a formal proposal by the end of March, with a final decision from member states expected a month later.
The commission insists that it is its job to manage the EU's budget spending - a right Ashton acknowledged. "In all cases, lead responsibility for implementation lies with the commission," one of her papers stressed. But member states insist that the EAS should, at least, draw up the grand strategy of what the money should be used for.
"There are some operational budgets ... that it is vital that the EAS is able to implement itself,"Britain's Foreign Minister David Miliband and his Swedish counterpart Carl Bildt wrote on Thursday. On other budget issues the EAS should be given a "strategic role", leaving the detailed management to the commission, they wrote.
Trouble also looms over the question of how quickly the commission's foreign bureaux - re-branded under Lisbon as EU embassies - should take on staff from other EU branches. Diplomats say all sides agree that, in the long term, EAS staff should be drawn equally from member states and the EU institutions.
But in the short term, the commission still controls, de facto, the great bulk of the staff, and EU member states are keen to make sure that their diplomats are brought in as quickly as possible. "There must be a concerted effort to bring (staff seconded from national diplomatic services) at all levels, including delegations, into the EAS at the beginning.We will not achieve a step-change in the way we think without also changing some of the thinkers,"Bildt and Miliband wrote.
And even if the member states and the commission can agree on those thorny issues, they will then have to steer their deal past the European Parliament, which has oversight of any agreements which impact on EU budget plans and staffing.
Members of the parliament (MEPs) who conducted Ashton's approval hearing in January made it clear that they wanted their body to be given control over top EAS appointments - leaving it open whether they would accept her proposals if they did not get concessions. Agreement on all those points has to come in the next eight weeks, if the EU is to set its diplomatic service on the road to action. As one source in Brussels put it, "the view is that it's possible in that time frame - if all the players keep on taking the steps that are needed." At present, that looks like a very big if indeed.
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