Germany has proposed giving the EU's foreign service sweeping new powers over neighbourhood policy and development aid.
Its ideas are to be discussed by EU foreign ministers at a meeting in Dublin on Friday (22 March).
But its non-paper, a three-page text dated 1 February and seen by EUobserver, has already been endorsed by 13 other EU countries - Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.
It says...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.