Here from euobserver is a detailed account of the goings-on behind the EU scenes, as everyone tries to work out how the new EU External Action Service will be structured.

And who will get which jobs, since that will have a huge influence on the way it all works (or not) in practice, not to mention the opportunities for dispensing patronage.

Here is another euobserver article on the shape of the EU’s future representation overseas.

Lo and behold, up my droll friend James Morrison has popp’d up as the head of Baroness Ashton’s cabinet. She is in good hands.

Never underestimate the grinding unrelenting power of the EU machinery and the pooled wealth behind it. Key points to look out for as the discussions continue:

  • where in all this fit member states and their diplomats
  • how EU positions will be articulated at the UN
  • what if any oversight and associated ‘control’ is grabbed by the European Parliament

Member states face a dilemma. The Lisbon Treaty strengthens their role in EU foreign policy at the coalface since it makes provision for member states diplomats to be seconded to EU missions.

But whom to send? The best, the worst, or the average?

Sending the best people takes them away from national foreign policy roles and boosts the long-term legitimacy of the EAS. Send the worst or the average – if others send the best – reduces the likely impact they are likely to have within EAS deliberations.

Most member states will want to cherry-pick, lobbying furiously for a certain number of key Ambassadorships and Deputies for their nationals as the price for getting the whole thing going. Within the member states there will be ruthless knifing as ‘new’ member states jostle for position against ‘old’ member states:

One thorny little bramble for Ms Ashton will be ensuring that new member states get a satisfactory share of senior appointments.

The EU Council and the commission, which will furnish two-thirds of EEAS personnel, are currently dominated by people from old member states. Out of the commission’s 1,657 foreign relations officials, 117 are from the 12 countries that joined the union after 2004. Just one of them, Hungarian diplomat Janos Herman in the commission’s Norway embassy, holds a top-level post.

"The Brussels mafia has made sure that our dirty moustaches are kept out of this," one Polish-origin EU official said.

And all this in turn will provoke intense sulking within the Commission as people who have dreamed of heading their own EU mission get trumped near the finishing line by smug member states diplomats keen to show that they are the real thing.

This is only the very start of a process which will last years if not decades. There are bound to be all sorts of difficulties working out the new structures, let alone doing anything with them.

Here in the UK we have the prosepct of regime change this year, so a Conservative government led by a team not exactly oozing Europhilia will need to look hard at what D Miliband has done in the twlight days of his rule and see if they want to unscramble any of it.

The Ever-Closer the Union, the Much Harder the property settlement if there is ever a Divorce?