March 07, 2020 / By mobanmarket
Mandates will be renewed this year Future of special envoys out of Ashton’s hands
A truce has now been called in a running battle between the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and its member states, over the EU’s special envoys, whose mandate is typically to prevent or defuse crises.
Ashton believes her diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS), should assume the responsibilities of the EU’s special representatives (EUSRs). Member states want that decision to be made as part of an ongoing review of the EEAS. But in the meantime the mandates of serving EUSRs have come up for renewal. Both sides have joined battle.
Click Here: United Kingdom Rugby Jerseys
The net result is that by the end of February the number of envoys will have dropped from 12 to nine, and one post – to the Caucasus – is now vacant. The EU, as a consequence, has a smaller diplomatic presence in the Sudans, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and (after Patricia Flor leaves on 28 February) in central Asia.
Under the truce agreed in recent weeks, Ashton has agreed to renew all mandates that need review before she leaves office late this year. It is her successor who will decide the fate of those posts.
This is a battle that is partly a turf war, partly an expression of different attitudes towards crisis management.
The idea of special envoys predates the EEAS – the first, for the Middle East peace process, was appointed in 1996 – and EUSRs could be seen as a forerunner of Europe’s efforts to forge a common foreign policy. When emergencies erupted, member states wanted to strengthen and formalise their separate efforts and find one voice. Their answer: choose a very senior diplomat, give him (or her) a small staff, and give him a mandate to talk with the movers, shakers and troublemakers in the region.
This at least is the general picture, though not all the EUSRs conform to the norm of a fire-preventing or fire-fighting diplomat: the EU has a special envoy to an institution, the African Union, and it has special envoys in Bosnia and Kosovo, two places where crises have acquired an uneasy permanence in a context of superficial stability.
Ashton’s general argument (the cases of Bosnia and Kosovo are rather more complex and specific) is that the EUSRs have been rendered unnecessary by the creation of the EEAS, which has a big headquarters for EU diplomacy in Brussels and now has delegations in 139 countries. That should be enough for most preventative diplomacy; and when a crisis breaks out or when a dossier is particularly sensitive, a senior Brussels-based official can be deployed.
But can a Brussels-based official really have done the preparatory work that becomes important during a crisis: to have acquired the key players’ contacts, discovered their importance, gained their trust, and kept the lines of communication clear? Investment in an envoy is surely good preventative diplomacy, the counter-argument runs.
One EEAS riposte is that such work is part of the job description of EU delegations and, in particular, the heads of mission. But at that point, the debate moves beyond crisis diplomacy to the nature of the EEAS.
The EU’s delegations are, in large part, the successors of European Commission delegations. And while the Council of Ministers has supplied staff, and member states have seconded diplomats, the EEAS – in Brussels and in the field – is principally staffed by officials who previously worked for the Commission.
Viewed in this way, the absorption of special envoys into the EEAS is part of a bureaucratisation of EU-level diplomacy.
A general trend is evident: as Ashton’s era as foreign policy chief ends, the EU’s crisis diplomacy has become ever more based in Brussels. That may provide clarity, but will it produce the results? Ashton describes envoys as an anomaly. But the US foreign service is a far older and more formidable operation than the EEAS, and yet US presidents have repeatedly felt the need to appoint special envoys.
Categories: News