March 2011
Paper Series
Summary: The European
External Action Service (EEAS),
set up on January 1, 2011, will
help the European Union create
a coherent and effective external
policy by bringing together the
EU’s “soft” trade and aid policy
tools and its member state-
driven foreign policy. EEAS Chief
Catherine Ashton builds on a
growing member state ethos of
cooperating on foreign policy
issues, but legal limits, the need
for unanimity and institutional
difficulties will constrain
her. Combining parts of the
Commission, Council Secretariat,
and member state diplomats
into the EEAS raises cultural and
professional issues only time can
resolve, while the Commission
and the Council Secretariat will
need to supplement the steps
they’ve taken to adapt to the
new institutional reality and
ensure the policy coherence
the EU desires. An increasingly
assertive European Parliament
enlivens the policy debate.
The global community needs a
more effective EU on the world
stage, and should help nurture
the EEAS, rather than criticize it
prematurely.
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The EU’s External Action Service:
Will it Deliver?
by Peter Chase
The international community —
and particularly the United States
— has a clear stake in the European
Union having a coherent and effec-
tive foreign policy. Europe and the
United States together created much
of the international law and institu-
tions that prevail today, based on
our shared belief in the dignity of
the individual and the rule of law
— values that underlie democratic
societies and market-based econo-
mies. The EU has the world’s largest
economy, and is its largest trader,
investor, and donor, with the United
States directly behind. The United
States and the EU should be natural
partners that can, working together,
increase their ability to achieve
desired foreign policy goals — the
vast majority of which they share,
even when they differ on tactics.
Both allies have a stake in the EU’s
new European External Action
Service (EEAS), established to help
ensure the EU has a coherent and
effective foreign policy. Set up on
January 1, and often referred to as
the EU’s “diplomatic corps,” the
EEAS was endowed with an initial
operating budget of €460 million
and some 7,000 employees — 1,600
in Brussels, 2,000 in the EU’s 136
missions worldwide, and some 4,000
engaged in civilian and military
crisis management operations in the
Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa,
and elsewhere. This global presence
builds on three other major changes
in the Lisbon Treaty that entered
into force December 1, 2009:
• Giving the EU legal person-
ality, and bringing under it the
Common Foreign and Security
Policy (CFSP) and Justice and
Home Affairs (JHA) that had
been outside the European
Community;
• Establishing a permanent chair
(“president”) of the European
Council, where heads of state
and government of the EU
member states meet to provide
policy guidance for the EU);
and
• Unifying the positions of the
Council’s high representa-
tive for the Common Foreign
and Security Policy and the
Commission’s commissioner for
external relations, as the head of
the EEAS.
It is, of course, too soon to tell if
these changes will deliver a coherent
and effective foreign policy for the
EU; early days have reportedly been
rocky and the new organization
 and processes will take some years to bed down. But any
judgment — perhaps by the 2013 review of the EEAS —
should be based on a full understanding of what came
before Lisbon, the limitations on the EU’s foreign policy,
and the institutional and personal dimensions of this
change.
The Pre-Lisbon Benchmark
Of these three other changes in the Lisbon Treaty, the
first is least discussed but arguably most important,
bringing EU policy instruments under one roof.
Before Lisbon, the vast majority of EU policy came
through the European Community, where the Commis-
sion would propose measures (generally in the economic
realm); the European Parliament and the Member States
in Council would modify and adopt them (usually using
qualified majority in Council); and the Commission
would enforce implementation, including by taking
member states to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
Most of the Commission’s two-dozen Directorates
General (DGs), the Council Secretariat, the Perma-
nent Representations of the member states that prepare
Council decisions, and virtually all the Commission’s
budget were devoted to Community policy.
This was largely a “domestic” process, but the Commu-
nity also had external policies, including trade and the
three Directorates that conducted development and
other relations with the rest of the world: DG Enlarge-
ment with nearby countries, including in the Balkans,
that might join the EU; DG Development (DEV) with
the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries that
had been European colonies; and DG External Rela-
tions (RELEX) for relations with all other regions. These
external policies were supported by about 15 percent of
the Community budget, supplemented by the European
Development Fund for the ACP, funded by member
states but managed by the Commission. In addition, even
internal Community policies had an external aspect, so
that, for example, the ECJ ruled that the EU’s internal
aviation market meant the Community (represented by
the Commission) had the exclusive power to negotiate
aviation agreements with third countries. To implement
these external policies, the Commission had delegations
in some 130 countries, but these “embassies” represented
only the Commission in its conduct of Community
policy.
2
In contrast, the Common Foreign and Security Policy
and Justice and Home Affairs — created by the 1993
Maastricht Treaty — were inter-governmental, decided
by unanimity, and supported in the CFSP case by a small
Council budget line. Council Secretary General Javier
Solana was the external face of the EU as high repre-
sentative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy,
supported by a part of the Council Secretariat. CFSP
policies were determined by member states in regional
and functional working groups that reported through
member state representatives in the Political and Security
Committee (PSC) to foreign ministers meeting in the
General Affairs and External Relations Council (chaired
by the member state that had the EU’s six-month rotating
presidency). Given his limited resources, Solana was
assisted by a growing number of special and personal
representatives for hot spots like Afghanistan or major
policy issues like human rights.
Solana could not direct Community policy instruments.
He had no control over the Community’s €50 billion
development spending, its trade or other economic
negotiations, or its representatives to many international
organizations (who came from the Commission) — all
aspects of the “soft power” he represented: the world’s
largest market, largest donor, and the embodiment of
democratic ideals that helped win the Cold War, unify a
once-divided Europe, and are influencing events in North
Africa even today. Even without recourse to these, Solana
and the procedures put in place after the Maastricht
Treaty managed to create an ethos of working together
on foreign policy issues. Certainly by Ukraine’s 2004
“Orange Revolution,” the EU regularly issued, in real
time, unanimous foreign policy statements on a range
of issues, often with, or parallel to, the United States. It
was at this time that Solana joined, and then effectively
became the spokesman for, the three “big” EU member
states in their work with the United States on Iran’s threat
to develop nuclear weapons, not least as collective deci-
sions of the EU were needed to adopt sanctions and other
measures behind an effective approach to Iran.
Solana’s EU had little “hard” power as national security
remained the purview of the member states, but this, too,
began to change. Little more than a decade has passed
since the U.K. and France, reacting to Europe’s failure in
the Balkans, decided at Saint Malo to press for European
cooperation within the EU framework toward a common
military platform. Since, the EU has established the Euro-
pean Defense Agency to guide procurement, established
 the EU military staff and crisis response mechanism,
developed the EU Battlegroups (comprised of rotating
contributions from member states), sent troops — with
NATO help — to the Congo, overseen crossings between
Gaza and Egypt, and launched a naval campaign against
piracy off Somalia, among other endeavors.1 The diffi-
culty the EU has in building its capabilities is exactly
the weakness of European member states’ capabilities
in NATO. Europe needs to address this, and, as the
recent U.K./France deal on carriers shows, the countries
understand that with today’s constricted budgets, they
can increase capabilities only by eking out efficiencies
through more cooperation.
Beyond Lisbon — Steps Toward Coherence?
As the EEAS comes into being, it does so in an EU that
now has the former Community’s soft power tools united
to a growing practice of cooperation on foreign policy
issues. By dissolving the Community, legally establishing
the Union, and putting both Community and CFSP tools
under the Union’s roof, the Lisbon Treaty has ended the
often counter-productive stove-piping that characterized
much of EU foreign policy over the past 15 years.
Scope: The EU versus Member States. EU foreign
policy has legal limits that do not apply to nation states.
The EU remains treaty-based; it has powers only where
the parties to the treaty explicitly grant them. Even where
the EU has the right to have policies (such as foreign
policy), it only has “competence” when implementing
policies member states have agreed on.2 (Member state
sovereignty is also limited, since where they have decided
the EU can act, they cannot; “coalitions of the willing”
in effect become impossible.) This is underscored in the
Declaration to the Lisbon Treaty on the Common and
Foreign Security Policy, which states the provisions on
EEAS “will not affect the existing legal basis, responsibili-
ties, and powers of each Member State in relation to the
formulation and conduct of its foreign policy, its national
diplomatic service, relations with third countries, and
participation in international organizations, including a
1
The EU currently has 20 Common Security and Defense Policy operations, 3 military
(in Bosnia, the anti-piracy off the coast of Somalia, training in Uganda for Somali
security forces) and 17 civilian.
2
See the ECJ ruling on the EU and the WTO for more on this notion of “potential”
competence, ECJ 95/1.
3
Member State’s membership of the Security Council of
the United Nations.”3
Scope: Substance versus Form. In this sense, even as
the following is about the EEAS as the EU’s new instru-
ment of foreign policy, it must be borne in mind that the
EU can only have a “foreign policy” where the member
states unanimously agree. The more contentious the
issue, the more time needed to reach accord and the
greater the danger the EU will be saddled with a “lowest
common denominator” approach. The effectiveness of an
institution is immaterial if the substance of the policies
is weak. That said, the EU evolution on foreign policy
over the past decade shows member states can agree on
important policies, the vast majority of which are conso-
nant with those of the United States.
But the innovations of the Lisbon Treaty do not answer
former Secretary of State Kissinger’s question about
whom to call in Europe. Kissinger and his descendants
will have a long time to wait for a “single number” —
member state foreign ministers will always be involved.
Institutional Ideals Versus Reality?
If the EU can only hope to bring “coherence” where
member states agree it should, and with the limited tools
at its (and their) disposal, will its own institutions allow
it to work effectively in those areas? Many in Brussels
appear to have doubts, perhaps titillated by gossip of
power and turf struggles, between European Council
President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commis-
sion President José Manuel Barroso at Summits, between
the EEAS and the Commission, within the Commission,
and between the European Parliament and everyone.
Van Rompuy v. Barroso. The Lisbon Treaty enshrines
the European Council (the heads of state and govern-
ment of the member states) as the EU policy lead on
all matters, from the Single Market to energy to climate
change to Myanmar sanctions. Normally, the European
Council “invites” the Commission to prepare proposals
to implement the policies, except in the CFSP area, where
the EEAS now has the lead. The same treaty, however,
3
This raises the question of the EU role in international organizations like the UN, its
technical agencies and the IMF. Without membership, EU foreign policy is hobbled
not just by limitations on the scope of its authority, but by a mélange of solutions in
areas where foreign policy is exercised. The significance of this conundrum increased
when the Lisbon Treaty brought CFSP under the EU and gave it legal personality: EU
law (and U.S. interest?) implies it should be a UN member, but the same law and gray
areas in it mean member states must remain members as well.
 limits the “President” of the European Council, Van
Rompuy, to represent the EU only on CFSP issues in
meetings with third countries, while the Commission
president leads on all others. Van Rompuy and Barroso
seem to have managed this somewhat artificial differenti-
ation thus far, but it is fragile and could break down with
other personalities in their positions.
The New High Representative — Four in One. A key
role of the EEAS is to support Solana’s successor, Cath-
erine Ashton, the (renamed) high representative of the
European Union for foreign affairs and security policy as
well as Commission vice president (HR/VP). This dual
role is essential to integrate Community instruments into
a coherent EU policy, not least as Ashton can authorize
expenditures from the Commission budget only in her
Commission vice president role.
This is just one example of the difficulties the authors
of the Lisbon Treaty may not have anticipated as they
sought integration and coherence. Ashton has taken
on Solana’s 100-hour-a-week job representing the EU
abroad. As chair of the new Foreign Affairs Council,
she travels to EU member state capitals trying to forge
consensus on policies, and then chairs monthly meet-
ings to get these adopted. As Commission vice president,
she must ensure the College of 27 Commissioners backs
her policies, and must represent U.K. interests at weekly
meetings of the College as it decides issues ranging from
chemicals to agriculture to supervision of the financial
services industry so important to London. And, as head
of the EEAS, she oversees a new institution, with all its
administrative and personnel issues. None of these roles
can be easily delegated. Many consider this an impossible
assignment, and it probably is.
The EEAS — Straddling Commission and Council.
Under the best of circumstances, creating a new organi-
zation is not easy. An overworked leader can’t help. And
when the organization is a merger as well as something
totally new, the difficulties can be compounded.
To blend the Community’s external policies with the
Council’s CFSP, the European External Action Service is
not a new institution but a service placed between those
two. To create it, the whole of DG RELEX and the parts
of DG DEV that determined ACP regional policy — as
well as the 136 overseas delegations they oversaw — were
stripped from the Commission and combined with the
part of the Council Secretariat that had supported Solana.
4
Member state diplomats are being brought in to consti-
tute eventually a third of this mélange.
The provisional organization chart4 published for the
EEAS just a week before its inauguration laid out a fairly
traditional diplomatic service: HR/VP Ashton chairing
a corporate board comprised of an executive secretary
general, a chief operating officer, and two deputy secre-
taries general; a counselor; the military committee and
crisis response team that had reported to Solana; six
Managing Directors covering five regions and Global
and Multilateral Affairs; and various other regional and
functional offices. In general, Ashton has received kudos
for the quality of the people appointed to these posi-
tions. The vast majority of the staffpower comes from
the Commission’s DGs RELEX and DEV; the far less
numerous Council staff have been — nominally at least
— integrated into them.
As noted, this merger has not gone easily. Council and
Commission cultures differ, with Council Secretariat
(and member state) diplomats overwhelmingly seeing
the use of force as a natural foreign policy instrument,
while Commission officials disapprove of it. Perhaps
not surprisingly, the 300 or so Council Secretariat staff
integrated into the EEAS feel overwhelmed and under-
represented.5 But many who come from DG RELEX are
equally concerned: positions once open for advancement
— including both delegation ambassador and deputy
positions — have been set aside to help bring in member
state diplomats. With the European Parliament insisting
that some EEAS positions also be open to them after the
2013 review of the EEAS, a “political appointee” system
known to the United States but foreign to most European
diplomatic services may be in the works. The impact of
all these on the esprit de corps so necessary to a diplo-
matic service should not be underestimated.
The integration of member state diplomats may well
prove the most difficult part of the EEAS. Both DG
RELEX and DG DEV benefited from regular infusions of
mid-level officials from member state governments. The
EEAS will expand this substantially, bringing in top level
officials as well, for potentially up to ten years. Recruiting
officials willing to stay away from their home services
4
http://eeas.europa.eu/background/docs/eeas_prov_organisation_en.pdf
5
The EAS absorbed the Council’s military and conflict prevention staffs, as well as its
critical “Situation Center,” which facilitates sharing of member state analysis and in-
formation, but otherwise Council Secretariat staff have only 6 of the top 38 positions
in the EAS. http://eeas.europa.eu/background/docs/eeas_prov_organisation_en.pdf
 that long may not be easy, and the longer they are away
the more likely they will want to “parachute” in to the
EEAS. Some Commission and Council officials see this
writing on wall and chose to stay in their home services
rather than transfer to the EEAS. If this continues, it will
prove a problem.
Overseas, the Commission Delegations became EU
Delegations with the December 2009 entry into force
of the Lisbon Treaty, but as of January 1, 2011, they
are now part of the EEAS. While the larger staff in the
EEAS should reduce the need for Solana’s former corps
of special representatives, managing the Commission/
Council divide in these smaller offices may prove more
difficult. Delegation heads and deputies will be from
the EEAS, but the trade, development, energy, and most
other officers will come from their respective Commis-
sion Directorates General.
The relationship between the EEAS and member state
embassies should prove less of a problem, even if it
is confusing to those outside the EU. In places where
member states do not have embassies, EU Delegations
may take over some of their functions. Indeed, some
have raised the possibility of the Delegations performing
consular functions as well, and there is talk of member
states closing posts to relieve strained budgets. Where
member state embassies do remain, the EU delegations
will coordinate policy execution among them.
Commission Coherence? Even as DGs RELEX and
DG DEV were hived off to the EEAS on January 1, the
Commission strove to ensure that a hybrid body associ-
ated with the Council’s former CFSP purview did not
infringe its exclusive prerogatives as initiator, negotiator,
spokesman, and implementer.
To ensure Commission policies, actions, and instruments
are adequately represented to the EEAS working groups,
DGs TRADE and DEVCO (the amalgamation of the
rump of DG Development with the Directorate General
that did programming) will assume the internal coordi-
nating role that DG RELEX generally used to play, with
DEVCO covering Africa and while TRADE gets the rest
of the world. In addition to sitting on the EEAS regional
policy committees, representatives from these Director-
ates will get input from the international offices of each of
the Commission’s other policy Directorates.
5
If this approach works, it will be a significant step toward
better coherence of Commission instruments, especially
in development, with EU foreign policy. But it not as easy
as it sounds: Directorates General report to Commis-
sioners, each of whom is nominally an equal in the
College. The new approach ’may overcome these internal
jealousies, but the task would have been better achieved
had the Commission Secretariat General itself taken on
the coordinating role.
Council Too. Better aligning Commission efforts with
the EEAS is an important step, but insufficient to ensure
coherence across the range of EU policies. In the end,
the Commission is implementing policies decided by the
Council and the European Parliament; with the EEAS
separated from the Council, it loses connection with the
policy process. As one step to address this, the EEAS now
wants to have a representative on the Council’s Trade
Policy Committee to ensure foreign policy desiderata
concerning, for instance, Pakistan, are considered. This
cuts across the board, since Council decisions in the areas
of agriculture, environment, consumer affairs, energy,
science, telecommunications, transport, education, and
the like have external dimensions. The Council Secre-
tariat has established a new office to ensure coherence
between these efforts and those of the EEAS working
groups, but as the National Security Council knows all
too well, the dynamics of domestic policy, and their
external effects, are difficult to control.
European Parliament — A Growing Actor. While the
European Parliament (EP) had, and has, little legal
decision-making power in EU foreign policy, its influ-
ence in this realm is constantly increasing. Even in
the past, EP amendments to Community law had
external repercussions, it had a say over the Commis-
sion’s external relations budget and it assented to the
Community’s international agreements. But in addition,
the EP’s Foreign Affairs Committee, filled with former
prime ministers and foreign ministers, has issued reports
and statements that have often influenced the political
context for EU foreign policy deliberations. For example,
EP complaints made it impossible for the Council to lift
the arms embargo on China in 2004-05. The EP used
its leverage over the legal acts needed to establish the
EEAS and its budget to accentuate its prerogatives over
EU foreign policy, gaining the right to hold hearings on
EEAS Ambassadorial nominees. This trend of EP engage-
ment in EU foreign policy will only increase.
 The Record — Not too Bad
It will take years for these institutional changes to
work out, and it may be unfair to judge them before,
for instance, the 2013 review of the EEAS. Certainly it
should be given time to move into a single building, set
for this fall. That doesn’t stop the criticism. Before the
advent of the EEAS, Ashton was criticized for a slow
response to Haiti, for not attending a major Defense
Council meeting, for a “weak” paper on the EU’s stra-
tegic partnerships (drafted for EU Heads reportedly by
her personal staff without recourse to the Council and
Commission experts), and for delays in setting up the
EEAS. And after the EEAS came into being, many saw
the EU response to developments in Tunisia and Egypt as
less than it should have been, while EEAS and Commis-
sion and Council staff have complained loudly about
dislocations and turf fights.
But at the same time, in the months since the EEAS was
founded, Barroso’s January trip to Central Asia made
progress on energy issues despite the transition to the
EEAS; Ashton has been to the Middle East twice; Ashton
and the commissioner responsible for aid in the Middle
East have together made numerous statements and
policy decisions; she’s chaired two major Foreign Affairs
Council meetings; the EEAS is drafting and getting
member state consensus on events happening from Sri
Lanka to Iran to the Comoros; and the EEAS website is
integrating announcements on all policies — trade, aid,
energy, environment — toward the outside world. These
and more are all positive signs.
Conclusion: The Right Idea, But…?
For all its alleged problems, the EU has been creating
a coherent foreign policy for some years. The changes
wrought by the Lisbon Treaty, including the creation of
the External Action Service, are part of this evolution and
— even with all the difficulties — will undoubtedly accel-
erate it. And the EEAS is filled with talented people who
want the EU to be a positive force in global governance.
It can be. And it is in America’s interest to see that it is.
The less time doubting the changes and the more spent
cultivating this new instrument, the better for us all.
About the Author
Peter H. Chase is a former U.S. State Department officer whose
last two assignments were as head of the Department’s Office of
EU Affairs and Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs at the
U.S. Mission to the European Union. He is now the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce’s senior representative for Europe and a nonresident
fellow of the German Marshall Fund. This article reflects his per-
sonal views only, not those of the U.S. Chamber or GMF.
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