The European Commission's External Service

Abstract

This article reviews and analyses successive reforms of the Commission's Delegations outside the EU; its “External Service”. It also poses relevant questions arising from the proposals in the draft Constitutional Treaty, which foresees the appointment of a Commission vice-president for foreign affairs and a “European External Action Service” (EEAS) based broadly on the Commission's External Service. It describes how thle EU's external relations are affected by the growingly central role of the External Service (ES) as it has evolved during its fifty-year existence. The article argues that frequent reform of the ES was a response to the Commission's outside environment rather than the result of a deliberate political decision to create a robust quasi-diplomatic service. While many recognised that a growingly powerful European Union needed a strategic view of the purpose of the External Service and an adequate management and personnel policy for its staff, the ES grew like Topsy. Today's ES is a lean and effective management structure. But, notwithstanding this, its future role is likely to be decided in terms of the political dialectic between intergovernmentalism - the proprietary attitudes of member state foreign services - and supranationalism - the policy preference of the European Commission. The ES may turn out to be the embryonic version of a European diplomatic service. Or it may prove to be no more than a technical support structure in an intergovernmental system of representation.