Over the past decade of institutional introspection in Brussels, many politicians supportive of ever-closer union have repeated the mantra that the EU should have the tools to project a more prominent and coherent identity as a major international actor. Thus one of the key elements of the defeated European constitution and its reincarnation, the Lisbon treaty, was the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), effectively the EU’s own diplomatic corps, set-up to serve the High Representative Baroness Ashton. Whether we like it or not, the Lisbon treaty is now in force, and governs both the legal basis and now –for the first time – the legal personality of the EU. Work to set up the EEAS has therefore begun in earnest and the service is expected to be launched in early October.
Proponents of a more global role for the EU have long argued that the establishment of the EEAS is a logical step in the development of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which was part of the Maastricht treaty approved by MPs and implemented by the Conservative government of John Major. The new UK coalition government certainly has sympathy for the argument that if the EU is to play a more substantial role in global diplomacy, development aid and multilateral problem-solving it should have the resources to do so credibly.
However the EEAS’ purpose is more than one of just undertaking a classical foreign ministry role. It also encompasses the direction of the civilian peacekeeping and crisis management operations of the EU as well as housing part of the CSDP military architecture (the political and security committee of member states’ ambassadors, known as the PSC). In addition it includes management of the EU’s enlargement and neighbourhood policy (ENP), and strategic areas of development cooperation and humanitarian aid – all of which are policy areas it shares with the Commission, which will thus partly relinquish its strategic powers in this area and will have to subordinate its priorities to the overall foreign policy objectives of the Union.
I have always subscribed to our party’s fundamental belief in the sovereign right of member states to retain an independent foreign policy. To put it another way, I believe the CFSP should be based primarily on an intergovernmental approach in which the Council’s common position is a reflection of the consensus and the input of the various member states and their sometimes competing interests. If any one member state objects there can be no EU position by definition, so every country subsequently in this particular area pursues its own sovereign policy.
That is not to say that I don’t think the EU has a role in foreign policy. The Council usually manages to craft a robust and pragmatic stance on most major foreign policy issues. But Britain should never be in the position of being outvoted by other member states, as is sometimes the case under the co-decision procedure of legislation by Council and the European Parliament in which qualified-majority voting applies at Council level.
The development of the EEAS is therefore a matter of great interest to me as Conservative spokesman and ECR Group coordinator, and should be a matter of great concern to the coalition government. For the past few months a power struggle between the institutions for control over the EEAS has been intensifying, with the hapless Baroness Ashton, new to the job, caught in the middle trying to assert her authority and leadership in the face of some increasingly sceptical member states and a fairly hostile continental press.
Meanwhile the European Parliament, led by two heavyweights – the veteran German CDU MEP and former chairman of the foreign affairs committee Elmar Brok and former Belgian Liberal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt – has been carving out its own powers. Already we have been granted the right to hold an ‘exchange of views’ hearing for all senior EU heads of delegation and special representatives before they take-up their posts. We have just scrutinized two key appointments (Washington and Kabul), which were a great success in terms of democratic scrutiny. Curiously this is a power not even granted to national parliaments over their national ambassadorial appointments and is inspired by the US Senate confirmation hearings. This is something we might consider for the reformed Westminster parliament to boosts its role by acquiring such rights of scrutiny of judicial and diplomatic appointments.
The other curious thing is that Declaration 14 of the Lisbon Treaty formally states the European Parliament has no new powers under the Treaty but the political reality is somewhat different! Ultimately the European Parliament wields the budgetary powers and co-decision powers over staff regulations, which mean without its approval the EEAS cannot be set-up.
At the same time I also strongly believe more must be done to keep the MPs from national parliaments of the 27 member states formally involved in holding the High Representative to account, particularly as the WEU Parliamentary Assembly, until recently chaired by Robert Walter MP, has now been dissolved. Thus the existing formal structures of European/national parliaments’ interaction and joint scrutiny (the so-called COFAC) of the CFSP and CSDP needs reviewing.
Therefore for the past few months I have been trying to shape this complex debate from a Conservative eurorealist point of view. I often feel like a lone voice amid the overwhelming majority of the European Parliament intent on a power grab at a time of political vacuum resulting from the distractions of the eurozone crisis.
I have had useful advice from the UK Permanent Representation, the expert civil servants and diplomats stationed in Brussels who were keen to help Conservatives even before we regained power, fully aware that EU decision-making would not be put on hold for the sake of the British election campaign. Hopefully our dynamic new foreign secretary William Hague and his excellent ministerial team, who until recently were naturally preoccupied by the priorities of election campaigning and successful coalition negotiations, will rapidly focus their attention on the EEAS. It will not only establish the EU’s foreign policy architecture for a generation but impact significantly on the Foreign Office – not least if the EEAS lures our best and brightest diplomats away for the many sought-after secondments that will be available to member states’ diplomats.
The power struggle over the EEAS is complicated and frequently exacerbated by clashing personalities. However, fundamentally it boils down to a handful of key issues. The first is the extent to which the EEAS should remain under the sole authority of the Council. The EPP, Socialists and Liberals in the European Parliament have tried to hijack the process by seeking to place the EEAS under the joint authority of the Council and the Commission, on the basis that the High Representative straddles the two.
To my mind this is a recipe for confusion and conflict. Member states don’t always agree at EU level but one thing on which they will happily agree is that they should have exclusivity in the conduct of EU foreign policy and that the supranational Commission should not be directly involved in foreign policymaking, but only its implementation and administrative support in terms of aid and resources. I am now confident that this more federalist proposal will be sidelined. At least its proponents have openly justified the proposal by claiming it will further their aims of ever-closer union and supranational governance. It essentially boils down to resources: namely whether the administrative budget of the EEAS, as a stand-alone sui generis hybrid institution should be a different line subject to direct parliamentary scrutiny or buried within the Commission budget, limiting Council involvement in the budget and how it is drawn up and spent.
It also depends on chains of command between the Commissioners and the High Representative and the local non-CFSP political staff in the delegations. It is emerging that all instructions will have to go via the High Representative or the president of the European Council Herman van Rumpoy (whose precise role is as yet unclear) to the EU heads of delegation and then be transmitted onto technical Commission staff on the ground handling all other policy areas eg. development and humanitarian aid. So the central role of the High Representative and Council as gatekeepers is intact.
Another contentious issue is whether the positions available to diplomats from member states should be filled on merit or by quota. Many of the smaller and newer member states are insisting on quotas, whereas I think positions should be awarded primarily on merit. It is extremely hard to justify to taxpayers such massive expenditure on the EEAS (projected to be up to €3 bn annually) if efficient management takes a back seat to a carve-up of cushy jobs. For instance, a brilliant British diplomat speaking Mandarin would be much better-placed to head the EU mission to Beijing rather than a diplomat from another member state who may speak three EU official languages but doesn't speak Chinese. Our FCO is very well positioned in this respect.
Somewhat to my surprise the UK is currently slightly under-represented in the external relations directorate-general of the Commission, whose personnel will transfer over almost completely to the EEAS, so we should actually be able to boost UK recruitment. The European Parliament is seeking to cap the number of temporary national experts (as opposed to seconded permanent diplomats) because it fears these will remain loyal to their governments and not the EU. Needless to say, Conservative MEPs will oppose this cap.
Another issue is whether or not to have two high-profile political deputy High Representatives (for which there is no legal basis in the Lisbon treaty) who would be answerable to the EU and national parliaments and who would deputise for the High Representative. The alternative proposal is simply to have EU or member state officials deputising for Baroness Ashton, such as the relevant ENP or development Commissioner and the foreign minister of whatever member state holds the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers.
There are pros and cons to each suggestion. Permanent political deputies have the advantage of being more publicly accountable and also familiar with the movers and shakers and how the corridors of power work in Brussels. Furthermore, given that the current High Representative is from the centre-left, political balance could be achieved by installing centre-right and liberal deputies. The foreign ministers overseeing their member state's rotating presidencies are generally never around long enough to master exactly how things work in Brussels but this proposal does have the advantage of bringing the member state foreign ministers back on board, as currently they are somewhat excluded. Already the initial proposal of an executive secretary-general of the EEAS (most probably a French candidate) has been rightly dropped in favour of simply an administrative one, thus preventing power accumulating behind the scenes which is not open to scrutiny by the European Parliament or national parliaments.
When Baroness Ashton was appointed as High Representative I was critical of her lack of experience. Although I now recognise she has made strenuous efforts to get up to speed on her complex brief. However, I never doubted that she is an able administrator, and it appears that she has adopted the EEAS as her cause célèbre so that she can leave a legacy when she eventually moves on. If she can successfully negotiate a way around all the various competing interests and establish a functioning and sustainable EEAS then she will deserve considerable credit.
Nevertheless, she seems to have packed her private office with many of the left-leaning officials she inherited from Peter Mandelson when she took on the trade portfolio in the previous Commission. She therefore seems to have no close aides who are in tune with current Conservative thinking over the intergovernmental structures required to assert the primacy of member states. She may have been appointed by a Labour government but she would be foolish to isolate herself from those advisers and officials sympathetic to the new Conservative and Lib Dem coalition government.
Interestingly this is the first time ever we have the scenario of a Labour Commissioner serving at the same time as a Conservative Lib Dem Government because in the past we always achieved political balance by having two UK Commissioners from the two main parties.
I am also concerned from a parliamentary perspective that under the working document proposed by Ashton she will be giving confidential briefings on CSDP missions only to those MEPs given security clearance on the foreign affairs committee (though paradoxically I am told she is yet to receive the highest level clearance herself). As currently proposed this is to be restricted to five MEPs and the top three political groups only, which means the ECR (and by consequence Conservative MEPs) will be excluded even though the UK, now with a Conservative Prime Minister is a major contributor to military missions like the Royal Navy-led Atalanta mission off the Horn of Africa and EUFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the UK may soon increase its presence. However Elmar Brok reassures me that on a need-to-know basis Conservative MEPs will, after suitable security clearance, be brought into the loop.
David Lidington, our talented new Europe minister, has been in Brussels this week for the first time since his appointment to brief Conservative MEPs and I have raised some of these issues directly with him.
Finally, I am sure that the very idea of the EEAS will be anathema to eurosceptics, especially those who advocate secession. I am not saying I am enamoured with the idea. I campaigned against the Lisbon treaty. I fought, and am still fighting, to stop the EEAS from adopting terms like ‘ambassador’ (with partial success) and ‘embassy’ (with total success), terms that should be the prerogative of sovereign states. But the Lisbon treaty is the new reality. We must engage with it and fight vigorously for British national interests. We need to move on from our principled opposition to Lisbon because – as the EEAS negotiations show – the danger is that we will simply be seen as churlish and will damage our country’s interests by sulking on the sidelines.