Theorising the EU’s Diplomatic Service: Rational Player or Social Body?

Abstract

‘It’s a plane. It’s a bird. It’s … the EEAS!’ Like Superman, the European External Action Service (EEAS) appears to be a strange visitor from another planet. It is not an EU agency, it is not a Commission Directorate-General and it is not an independent institution like the European Central Bank. Most observers agree on the basics: It is the EU’s first common diplomatic body, formally established in the summer of 2010. It supports the EU foreign affairs chief (High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) in conducting the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). It has delegations around the world working on behalf of the people of Europe and representing the EU as a whole. However, as the editors note in their introduction to this book, there is far from agreement on what the EEAS really is. Some scholars call it ‘a quasi-diplomatic corps’ (Duke, 2002), others ‘an interstitial organisation’ (Batora, 2013) or an ‘embryonic version of a European diplomatic service’ (Spence, 2004). There is little doubt that the EEAS is one of the EU’s most important inventions since the introduction of the single currency with the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999, but how are we to theorise the EEAS as a social, legal and political phenomenon?