EU reins in expansion of its overseas delegations

Date: 18/04/1996

THE European Commission has called a halt to the expansion of its diplomatic presence around the world.

After a roller-coaster five years during which the number of overseas delegations almost doubled, the Commission is now represented in 126 countries outside the Union stretching alphabetically from Albania to Zimbabwe.

This phenomenal expansion has been largely fuelled by the collapse of Communism, with offices opening throughout Central and Eastern Europe, in the Baltic states and increasingly in the former Soviet Union.

But as the EU has lifted its ambitions, so it has broadened its geographical horizons. At the instigation of the European Parliament, which specifically allocated funds in this year's EU budget for the purpose, the Commission is opening representations in Nicaragua and Sri Lanka. One of its newest offices is in Hanoi, where the staff moved into temporary premises only last week.

But this rapid expansion has been achieved at a cost and its consequences are now coming home to roost.

Resources are thinly stretched and frequently respond to historical rather than current demands. Some member states harbour latent jealousy of the Commission's growing international stature, a feeling which explains why the top officials in delegation offices are referred to as heads of delegation and not as ambassadors.

But the greatest immediate challenge to the offices' activities comes from the Parliament. MEPs are threatening to cut 10&percent; from the overseas representations' budget for 1996 unless the Commission introduces greater coherence into what has essentially been seen as haphazard rather than planned growth.

This combination of pressures has forced the Commission to stop and take stock for the first time of the giant it has spawned. Shortly before Easter, the decision was taken to freeze the opening of any more delegation offices and put on hold earlier plans to establish new ones in Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Belarus.

Officials are now preparing to conduct an overall investigation of the Commission's external network, weighing resources against needs, and are expected to agree to some restructuring of its overseas operations. The exercise is also likely to examine the degree of cooperation between the delegations and EU member states' embassies around the world.

“Generally, member states and the Commission now work well together as earlier suspicion has disappeared. There are monthly coordination meetings which are chaired by the EU country holding the presidency, although it is the Commission which actually takes any trade initiatives. I feel that our work is especially appreciated by smaller EU countries,” says one senior Commission official.

The Commission resents allegations that it runs a lavish empire of overseas outposts. The total cost last year of its 126 delegations, with their 600 full-time staff and 1,800 local agents, was 192 million ecu - equivalent to 0.25&percent; of the EU's annual 85-billion-ecu budget.

The most prestigious is undoubtedly Washington, with a total staff of 70, of whom a dozen are full-time Commission officials. Now run by Hugo Paemen, who headed the EU negotiating team in the Uruguay Round of GATT world trade talks, its previous head was former Dutch Prime Minister Andreas Van Agt.

Next in rank come delegations in Moscow, Tokyo and, increasingly, Beijing, although all pale in comparison to the major embassies of the EU's larger states.

At the other end of the scale are a host of recently created representations in Central and Eastern Europe and longer standing offices in African countries such as Benin or the Gambia, where full-time staff numbers total less than a handful.

The pressures are equally great in completely new delegations such as the office in Hanoi. Two senior officials, a trainee agronomist and four local staff are responsible for traditional diplomatic tasks and the growing range of economic and commercial links between the Union and Vietnam which have been boosted by a new cooperation agreement.

Pierre Amilhat, who took up his new post of counsellor last month, underlined the size of the task ahead, saying: “The Commission plans to spend 40 to 50 million ecu annually for the next five years. The first EU/Vietnam joint commission will be established this autumn. Then there are all the trade questions and the need to develop a market-opening strategy, not to mention joint ventures and the fact that the European Investment Bank will soon start operating here.”

The Commission delegations' role as a link between the host country and the Union is regularly used by countless visitors from Brussels and elsewhere, with a steady stream of Commissioners and senior officials passing through the Washington and Tokyo offices.

But the record for welcoming the greatest number of Commissioners in the shortest time looks set to be taken by Pretoria. In the first half of next month, the delegation will play host to President Jacques Santer and his colleagues Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann and Edith Cresson, responsible for science and education, when they attend an information society conference.

They will be preceded by Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino seeking out opportunities for fisheries cooperation and ACP Commissioner João de Deus Pinheiro, who is involved in negotiating a new partnership between the Union and South Africa.

But the offices are not there for the exclusive use of Commissioners and their officials. Increasingly, they are ports of call for MEPs seeking help in arranging meetings with local representatives and organising visits to specific projects.

British Labour Euro MP Glenys Kinnock has visited several delegations, particularly in Africa, over the past year. She pays generous tribute both to the respect the majority of officials enjoy in the local communities and to the help they have given her.

“I have generally been extremely impressed. When I was in the Sudan with Lord Plumb last year to gather information on human rights, the delegation was very helpful and was clearly trusted by people who generally would not want to be seen talking openly to us,” she says.

The offices also serve as centres for overseeing the way the Union's growing volume of humanitarian aid - which reached almost 700 million ecu last year - is spent on the ground.

Over a third of this sum was destined for the former Yugoslavia and explains why the possibility of opening further delegations in the area to follow the lead taken by Sarajevo has been excluded from the general freeze on new delegations.

At the other end of the scale came the 23-million-ecu programme supervised by the Commission's delegation in Port- au-Prince over the past two years to reconstruct Haiti's economy after the return to power of President Aristide.

The expansion of the Commission's overseas network and its humanitarian projects in dangerous parts of the world have, however, brought with them increasing concern for the physical safety of the staff involved and the security of the information held by the delegations.

The former is more acute for offices in Latin America and a number of African countries, the latter for those in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union handling sensitive issues such as the Phare and Tacis projects.

Each of the delegations round the world is given a safety rating and security systems are built in accordingly when new offices are opened. These precautions came into their own when renewed fighting broke out in Liberia last week and contingency plans were activated to ensure the safety of the four Commission experts and their families caught up in the hostilities. But on other occasions, the risks are considered too great and personnel is evacuated.

The Commission's presence in the Gambia has been drastically scaled down, operations in Somalia are run by officials who enter the country only for brief spells, and the office in Algeria has been unmanned since the latest outbreak of fundamentalist violence.