Member News
By Lord Howell of Guildford - 24th January 2010
Lord Howell writes for ePolitix.com ahead of his parliamentary question on the European Union External Action Service.
The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) minister, Baroness Kinnock, has admitted that the new External Action Service (EAS) will have an impact on all the work of the FCO, and she is right. It will take away personnel and resources, and generate all sorts of new time-consuming communication flows just at a time when the FCO is on its knees and facing enormous budget cuts, thanks to the slide in the pound and Treasury inertia.
The contrast between the expansive plans for the new EAS and the penury to which our own foreign service is being reduced, could hardly be more startling.
The outgoing head of EU foreign affairs, Javier Solana, has forecast that the EAS would become 'the biggest diplomatic service in the world', a foreign service with an importance equal to those of China or the USA. Under Baroness Ashton, the new EU High Representative, it will have a budget of billions and a staffing of around 3,000. (Some estimates suggest a much larger figure.)
All this might just be justifiable if it was clear as to what the large new diplomatic structure will actually be doing. The proposal from Brussels is that it will promote and carry forward a united and fully-fledged EU policy on all international issues. But no such policy exists, and hunting for it will prove, like the Hunting of the Snark, an utterly fruitless undertaking. Of course, there are certain EU-wide external tasks to be coordinated and pursued, but there is no need whatever for an extensive new network of diplomats and offices to duplicate existing EU cooperation and institutional links.
The real purpose can be guessed at, and it is to impose an artificial unanimity of views on all member states in an effort to build up Europe on the world stage as a bloc or aspiring superpower. But this reflects a totally outdated view of the new global architecture and fails to take account of the changing distribution of world power, which is away from the West, away from giant blocs and away from centralised patterns of government.
The EAS will be unaccountable, except in the vaguest and most remote sense, and will promote not unity but division and argument in Europe. My question seeks to find out what, of anything, the British government is doing to limit the damage which this distracting and unnecessary initiative will inflict on us.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd