EU foreign service a step nearer

Date: 03/09/1998

By Mark Turner

A EUROPEAN diplomatic service could move one step closer to reality when more than 100 heads of the European Commission's external delegations gather in Brussels next week.

During a marathon five-day schedule of meetings with the European Parliament, Foreign Affairs Commissioners and officials, the 111 delegates will, officially, focus on their role in promoting the single currency abroad.

But as the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy takes shape, and the Union prepares to appoint a 'Mr CFSP' in 1999, they will also consider the institution's role in an increasingly regionalised world.

Specifically, the Commission will ask whether its delegations should continue to be a rather loose amalgamation of trade promoters, aid disbursers and Union proselytisers, or begin to take on a more coherent role as spokespeople for a continent.

The extent to which emerging multilateral diplomatic mechanisms will replace traditional bilateral ties is one of the most heated foreign policy debates of the late 1990s, with the EU firmly in the vanguard.

"Diplomats are wont to stress the continuity rather than the change in their role, yet they are virtually all engaged in reviews and studies which underline the fact that change is the order of the day," wrote Commission official David Spence in a recent discussion paper. "A series of unparalleled new task and challenges for European foreign ministries has arisen."

Although the hard core of traditional foreign policy remains the province of national European governments, visa and immigration policy, trade promotion and inter-regional dialogue is increasingly passing to supranational institutions.

According to some estimates, the Commission - with 128 delegations and offices - already has Europe's fourth-largest network of foreign missions after the UK, France and Germany, and is a growing force in diplomatic circles.

The obvious way ahead, according to Euro-federalists, would be for the Commission's foreign service gradually to assume primacy in diplomatic relations, while national embassies restrict themselves to promoting national companies and offering their citizens a friendly face.

Clearly that goal is some way from being achieved. As events from the Yugoslav war to the latest Iraqi crisis have starkly demonstrated, European countries are far from sharing a single foreign policy vision, and appear unlikely to do so in the short or medium term.

On a more practical level, most governments remain acutely reluctant to share national intelligence with their EU partners. Interestingly, the UK, which has argued most vocally against pooling resources in theory, has in practice been the most willing to transmit information, according to Brussels officials.

It is also far from clear whether the inevitable consequence of a common foreign policy would be the creation of a single European foreign service.

As experience in the United Nations shows, the other option would be to coordinate the work of national embassies far more closely through regular meetings and circulating relevant papers, and to entrust the rotating presidency with a spokesman's role where appropriate. A number of countries have already established job-sharing arrangements in remote posts.

The Commission's delegations also have work to do if they want to be taken more seriously. In some, a legacy remains of patronage and inefficiency bequeathed from the days when such bodies were little more than aid posts in former colonies, and stories of dubious standards of management in the eastern European and former Soviet Union delegations are legion.

This is changing, however. The cut-throat competition for the Commission's young expert scheme, which gives promising officials a chance to hone their skills abroad, demonstrates a growing professionalism in the service.

A recent Commission review of the delegations marked a concerted effort to use them more systematically and coherently, and the exercise is likely to be galvanised by the appointment of an EU High Representative and the creation of the CFSP planning unit.

Few doubt that as the Union's trade clout grows, so too will its political power.

"You cannot separate external economic relations from external political relations," asserted former Belgian ambassador Philippe de Schoutheete in a recent interview with European Voice.

However, the big question remaining is the degree to which ordinary Europeans will actually welcome this development. If it proves as unpopular as editorials in many newspapers across the Union have suggested, a revamped European diplomatic service might find itself with no one to represent.