Wednesday

31st May 2023

France and Germany eye top job in EU diplomatic corps

  • Mr Vimont at a food and wine festival in the US (Photo: SETH BROWARNIK/RED EYE PRODUCTIONS)

With plans for the EU's new diplomatic corps entering their final stage, EU capitals have quietly begun to negotiate over who will take the top jobs up for grabs.

The office of EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton is aiming to submit a draft organigram for the External Action Service (EAS) to EU diplomats in Brussels on 17 March.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

According to an EU official acquainted with the document, Ms Ashton's office wants the service to have nine senior posts: A secretary general, two deputy secretary generals and, below them, six director generals.

At the top of the hierarchy, Ms Ashton will mainly do shuttle diplomacy on the model of her predecessor, Javier Solana, who clocked up over 2.6 million air miles in his 10 years in office. The EU's 11 "special representatives," such as Marc Otte on the Middle East, will report directly to her.

The secretary general is to stay in Brussels and run the EAS on a day-to-day basis.

He will oversee the work of the six director generals and a number of autonomous EAS cells: the EU's Military Staff, responsible for planning overseas military missions; SitCen, an intelligence-sharing bureau; an internal security unit; an internal audit unit and a department handling communications and relations with other EU institutions.

The two deputy secretary generals will not have administrative duties, freeing them up to replace Ms Ashton at internal EU meetings or second-tier international events.

EU capitals are wary of openly lobbying for their candidates due to the accepted wisdom that early runners do not finish first.

But diplomatic sources say that the French ambassador to the US, Pierre Vimont, the secretary general of the French foreign ministry, Pierre Sellal, and a senior aide to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Christoph Heusgen, are the current favourites for the secretary general job.

Messrs Vimont and Sellal both have strong EU credentials, having served as France's ambassadors to the union during two previous French EU presidencies, in 2000 and 2008, respectively. Mr Heusgen was the top political advisor to Mr Solana.

The argument in favour of a French candidate is that French official Pierre de Boissieu, who currently runs the EU Council, will cede his place to a German official, Uwe Corsepius, in 2011. "We have a lot of good candidates for all the levels of the service. But it's premature to talk about these issues," a French diplomat said.

On the other hand, French EU official Christine Roger is already being lined up to become president of the EU's Political and Security Committee, a senior EU Council body handling security decisions. Germany has got little by way of top jobs in the new-look EU so far, with its EU commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, taking the medium-weight energy portfolio.

"It would be a bad sign of Germany's level of interest in EU foreign policy if it does not have a senior figure in the EAS," an EU diplomat said.

Meanwhile, Sweden's EU ambassador, Christian Danielsson, is being talked about as a possible deputy secretary general.

Six pillars

The six director generals will each run a department composed of several hundred officials, forming the main pillars of the EAS architecture.

One directorate is to take care of budget and personnel. A second one is to handle "global affairs" such as climate change, human rights and democracy promotion. A third one is to manage EU relations with multilateral bodies, such as the UN and the G20, as well as legal and consular affairs.

The remaining three are to be split on geographical lines: A fourth directorate is to cover EU neighbourhood countries, accession candidates, Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East. A fifth one is to span industrialised countries such as the US, Canada, Mexico, China, Japan and Australia. The sixth one is to take care of developing countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Ocean.

The European Commission and the European Parliament are also circulating draft organigrams with competing ideas for the EAS structure. "There's probably a draft organigram on every floor of every EU building in Brussels," another EU diplomat said.

The newer EU member states are pushing for senior EAS posts to be open to a free competition based on merit. But it is clear that the top nine appointments will be political decisions.

An EU official told this website that new member states can realistically aim to fill some of the director general-level posts only. The contact added that Polish centre-right MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski and the director of the Diplomatic Academy in Warsaw, Andrzej Ananincz, are in the frame.

MEPs to urge block on Hungary taking EU presidency in 2024

"This will be the first time a member state that is under the Article 7 procedure will take over the rotating presidency of the council," French Green MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, the key lawmaker on Hungary, warned.

European Parliament scales back luxury MEP pension fund

The European Parliament's Bureau, a political body composed of the president and its vice-presidents, decided to slash payouts from the fund by 50 percent, freeze automatic indexations, and increase the pension age from 65 to 67.

WhoisWho? Calls mount to bring back EU directory

NGOs and lobbyists slammed the EU commission for removing contact details of non-managerial staff from its public register, arguing that the institution is now less transparent.

Exclusive

MEP luxury pension held corporate assets in tax havens

While the European Parliament was demanding a clamp down on tax havens, many of its own MEPs were using their monthly office allowances to finance a luxury pension scheme that held corporate assets in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and elsewhere.

Column

What a Spanish novelist can teach us about communality

In a world where cultural clashes and sectarianism seems to be on the increase, Spanish novelist Javier Cercas (b.1962) takes the opposite approach. He cherishes both life in the big city and in the countryside.

Opinion

Poland and Hungary's ugly divorce over Ukraine

What started in 2015 as a 'friends-with-benefits' relationship between Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński, for Hungary and Poland, is ending in disgust and enmity — which will not be overcome until both leaders leave.

Latest News

  1. Germany unsure if Orbán fit to be 'EU president'
  2. EU Parliament chief given report on MEP abuse 30 weeks before sanction
  3. EU clashes over protection of workers exposed to asbestos
  4. EU to blacklist nine Russians over jailing of dissident
  5. Russia-Ukraine relations the Year After the war
  6. Why creating a new legal class of 'climate refugees' is a bad idea
  7. Equatorial Guinea: a 'tough nut' for the EU
  8. New EU ethics body and Moldova conference This WEEK

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. International Sustainable Finance CentreJoin CEE Sustainable Finance Summit, 15 – 19 May 2023, high-level event for finance & business
  2. ICLEISeven actionable measures to make food procurement in Europe more sustainable
  3. World BankWorld Bank Report Highlights Role of Human Development for a Successful Green Transition in Europe
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic summit to step up the fight against food loss and waste
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersThink-tank: Strengthen co-operation around tech giants’ influence in the Nordics
  6. EFBWWEFBWW calls for the EC to stop exploitation in subcontracting chains

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. InformaConnecting Expert Industry-Leaders, Top Suppliers, and Inquiring Buyers all in one space - visit Battery Show Europe.
  2. EFBWWEFBWW and FIEC do not agree to any exemptions to mandatory prior notifications in construction
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersNordic and Baltic ways to prevent gender-based violence
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Economic gender equality now! Nordic ways to close the pension gap
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: Pushing back the push-back - Nordic solutions to online gender-based violence
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersCSW67: The Nordics are ready to push for gender equality

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us