Building a European Diplomacy: Recruitment and Training to the EEAS

The recent advent of the European Union (EU) External Action Service (EEAS) represents a major step towards a new kind of diplomacy in the international arena. However, while the construction of such a large, supranational corps of diplomats is wholly unprecedented, the EU's successful track record in its own internal diplomacy contains many lessons for its future external diplomacy.

If these lessons are implemented well, the EEAS will be coherent and effective, transforming the EU's foreign policy landscape and catapulting it onto the world stage. If not, this new institution risks becoming a weak bureaucratic experiment that could end up working at cross purposes with the diplomatic apparatus of the Member States already in place.

Specifically, this article focuses on the recruitment and training of EU diplomats and the challenges of fostering a strong esprit de corps, sense of collective identity, as well as a high level of professionalism, expertise, and flexibility. The author uses constructivist theory and argues that this approach has much to offer policymakers when it comes to understanding the nature of norms as well as how and why they change.