The Telegraph reports that there is a scary new plan being hatched in Brussels – for the EU to have Embassies.

Well?

First, the EU already has a goodly selection of Delegations and Offices round the world. They are there to carry out work in policy areas where the EU has (in varying degrees according to the area) formal authority to represent the Union – most notably trade and international assistance.

The EU’s Delegations’ profiles vary, and depend to a large degree on the energy and competence of the Head of Delegation. Some are active and good. Some are active and bad. Many are not that active and not especially good. 

In practical terms, Delegations mostly have insecure communications – not the way to encourage frank analysis. Plus internal EU/Commission process and Euro-etiquette discourage initiative and lively thinking, to a degree which British diplomats find remarkable.

On the other hand, maybe there are some countries where our national interests are really pretty small and so it makes sense for an EU presence to represent us all? Peru?

Eurosceptics looking at this messy picture might think that the whole structure is a stunning waste of money, but draw glum consolation from the fact that it is being wasted, leaving classic national Embassies to fulfil their proper role.

Europhiliacs will say that the contradictions/weaknesses in the EU’s external work and profile show why the EU needs to pull all this together properly under one roof – the EU is a vast common enterprise, so is it not naturel that it have a common foreign policy within a common structure? Oh, and what about the waste of 25 large cars (mainly Mercedes, some BMW and the odd Peugeot, Volvo and Jag) delivering 25 EU Ambassadors to lobby a host government? 

What to do? More? Or Less? Or Different?

The Lisbon Treaty was intended to put these issues on a more coherent footing. According to the FCO website the Treaty:

[C]reates a ‘High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’. Appointed by the European Council with agreement of the Commission President, the High Representative will conduct the Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. The Member States will task the High Representative on foreign policy and he or she will implement commonly agreed policies. The office of High Representative will merge the two existing roles of High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the External Relations Commissioner to bring greater coherence to the EU’s external action. The High Representative will also be able to present agreed EU positions in international organisations – such as the Member State that holds the Presidency does now.

But won’t this in practice mean that the British diplomatic service will be downgraded? The FCO says no:

The post will bring clarity to the EU’s existing external actions by combining the roles of the current EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (Javier Solana) and the Commissioner for External Relations (Benita Ferrero-Waldner). This is intended to avoid wasteful institutional wrangling and enable the EU to act effectively at the international level.

As is the case now, it will be the Member States, acting by unanimity, who set the EU’s common foreign and security policy (CFSP) objectives. And it will be the Member States who task the High Representative to take forward activity under the CFSP. Where we don’t agree we can still act independently.

Hmm. Sinister use of the word ‘still’ in that final sentence?

So much for the official line. It is the practice that counts.

And there is a twist.

Buried in the small print is a new requirement: that the new EU External Action Service offices will be staffed partly by people seconded from member states’ national diplomatic services (ie not solely by officials owing their only loyalty to Brussels institutions).

How many? How will this work?

If you look at that Telegraph piece again with this in mind, it becomes much clearer. Battle is now raging behind the scenes in Brussels and member states over the ‘ultimate’ loyalty of these new offices, and who actually works in them.

Should ‘EU Ambassadors’ answer to the European Parliament, or to the Council representing member states? According to the Telegraph:

… Brussels officials fear that, if controlled by national governments, the new EEAS would draw power from "Community" bodies, such as the Commission, to inter-governmental institutions such as the Council of the EU, which represents member states. "Any inter-governmentalism of policy areas under Community competence has to be avoided," states the confidential document.

Some of the crafty British officials involved in drafting the Lisbon Treaty give an innocent smile at this point. What? The Treaty indeed gives ‘inter-governmentalism’ a new lease of life? It draws power away from ‘common’ EU institutions? Mon Dieu! Who would have thought it?

Back in real life, it will take years, even a couple of decades or so, for this new ‘External Action Service’ to get set up and settled down. So for the time being host governments will carry on listening to the Ambassadors from the most powerful member states, as their capitals will be the ones primarily determining what the EU says and does.

The Big Picture?

As we pros all know, the huge (and real) risk in all this is that far too much grown-up effort is thrown away on trying to avoid fatuous EU positions being adopted. For the sake of an easy life an inclination develops to say that if the EU structures are ‘in the lead’ on an issue, bilateral diplomatic effort is not really needed.

And since the EU will be inclined to proclaim that it has the lead on anything one can think of, national diplomacy risks withering away in favour of EU diplomatic Pathetic Sharks.