Commission delegations come of age

What are they up to, the Com­mis­sion delegations abroad? Some 700 officials are scattered across the globe, in 123 countries at the last count. They work in offices ranging from what are really fully-fledged embassies to ‘antennes’ in, say, Papua New Guinea.

Where to start? I stick a pin in the map and call the EU chargé in Trinidad and Tobago. Anthony Smallwood has gone to America, the switchboard girl says. I discover my old friend in Washington, having just started work as Commission spokesman there. The job is demanding but for a Commission man the equivalent of winning the Lotto.

The embassy - or, strictly speaking, ‘delegation’ - at 2300 M Street is currently the jolliest and most high-profile European rep­resen­t­ation of them all. It has had a special vibrancy since the appointment in 2004 of former Irish Taoiseach John Bruton, as ambassador.

Astute, convivial, and tough, Bruton, 59 has charmed Washington since he arrived, and pens an exuberant "ambassador’s corner" on the mission internet site.

This high-profile political appointment is perhaps an indicator of things to come in the Commission’s External Service (Relex), which has grown, quietly but steadily, since the distant days of 1955, when the European Coal and Steel Community opened an office in London.

The big expansion started some 30 years ago with EU’s attempt to "do something" about the impoverished countries of the former British and French colonies - and aid and development, along with trade, still dominate the work of much of the external service. (Counting all EU countries and aid together, Europe accounts for around 54% of world aid.)

There was another bulge in the 1980s with dele­gations all over central and eastern Europe.

Critics claim that the ‘deconcentration’ of the service over the last decade - moving aid and development officials out of Brussels and into the field - has done little except shift a lot of mind-numbing and frequently unnecessary bureacracy overseas, at huge public expense. Others argue that the policy has helped professionalise the service. Whatever the truth, Commission representations are now often better-resourced and staffed than their member state counterparts, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where EU aid has become essential to survival.

But even in poorer countries the work of a delegation is more than "an ATM machine for EU largesse", with over 70% of the work ticking boxes, as one cynic puts it. The relationship is more complex and more equal, especially with countries like Thailand or indeed Trinidad - now a significant energy exporter - which are transition rather than development countries. A more sophisticated, more political, approach, has become necessary, and the service’s domination by aid and development experts is gradually fading. François Massoulie, a Relex high-flyer with long experience of India and the Middle East, says EU missions provide what it says on the tin: essential continuity, support for whichever country has the rotating presidency, and carrying what he calls the EU’s "collective memory".

If there was in the past a tendency for ambassadors of powerful EU states holding the rotating presidency to (ab)use the EU delegation as a secretariat, that has all but disappeared. Monthly meetings of EU member state ambassadors, in Bangkok for instance, are as a rule held at the EU representation, not at the embassy holding the presidency.

And while supervising a large aid programme, ambassador Friedrich Hamburger (another development man) takes a political lead in making a demonstrative annual visit to the huge Mae La refugee camp in Thailand to indicate European dissatisfaction that 150,000 Burmese refugees are being warehoused indefinitely on the border without Thailand recognising them, or their rights as refugees.

But Europe’s face abroad is still awaiting the constitution, or treaty, which will allow it to show itself as a proper diplomatic service.

• Recruitment: With few exceptions, the recruitment of officials is from the [external relations] ‘Relex family’, ie, officials already on board. Most will have passed a general concours and spent some time in Brussels. Apart from contracts made locally by delegations themselves, there are also ‘contract agents’. There is also a ‘young expert’ scheme of two-year assignments to delegations.

But beware, much of this kind of work is boring and bureacratic, even at senior level.

Consult http://europa.eu. int/ epso/index_en.htm

What are they up to, the Com­mis­sion delegations abroad? Some 700 officials are scattered across the globe, in 123 countries at the last count. They work in offices ranging from what are really fully-fledged embassies to ‘antennes’ in, say, Papua New Guinea.