Unrevised transcript of evidence taken before
The Select Committee on the European Union
External Affairs (Sub-Committee C)
Inquiry on
EUROPEAN EXTERNAL ACTION SERVICE
Evidence Session No. 11 Heard in Public Questions 229 - 232
TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2013
2.00 pm
Witnesses: Elmar Brok, Roberto Gualtieri, Arnaud Danjean, Véronique De Keyser, Tarja Cronberg, Sir Graham Watson, Charles Tannock and Sir Robert Atkins
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
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Members present
Lord Teverson (Chairman) Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Lord Lamont of Lerwick Lord Radice ______
Examination of Witnesses
Elmar Brok MEP, Chairman, European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET),
Roberto Gualtieri MEP, AFET, Arnaud Danjean MEP, Chairman of the SEDE
Sub-Committee, AFET, Véronique De Keyser MEP, AFET, Tarja Cronberg MEP,
AFET, Sir Graham Watson MEP, AFET, Charles Tannock MEP, AFET, and Sir
Robert Atkins MEP, AFET, gave evidence.
Elmar Brok: Thank you very much for coming to us. Most of you I have known for many years, I must say. I think I saw you first 30 years ago, so I hope we have an interesting debate. To tell you the truth, I am a little late because I came from a festivity. In another room of this Parliament, there was a meeting about the Élysée treaty and the
German/French relationship. Today, we have the 50th anniversary, and this is such an historical event. It just started in Berlin. I was invited to that but I am here now. For the first time in Berlin, there was a full session of both Parliaments. The French and the German
Parliaments met for a joint session in Berlin, in the Reichstag, which I believe is of European dimensions. It is very important that that was possible, if you have seen our history. I wrote an article about that, and read in the papers of Adenauer and De Gaulle at that time, and then we had the middle of the debate. The two guys said at that time, one week after De
Gaulle stopped membership negotiations with Britain, that it is not possible to have someone in the Union who does not apply to all the rules of the Common Market and has special treatment. I thought, “What a modern debate to have in 1963”. It was more or less 2 from both sides the same arguments as there are today. Sometimes you read that in the old papers, but still we are not clear on all sides who was right at that time and who is right today. That is the reason why we have this discussion here.
Lord Teverson, please start our debate. Here we have members from all the groups—from the EPP, from the Socialists, from the Liberals, Sir Robert Atkins, who is representing himself and his group. Please, you have the floor.
Q229 The Chairman: President, thank you very much indeed for your welcome and thank you for participating in our inquiry in this particular fashion. Perhaps I could just explain that, in conducting our inquiry into the External Action Service, we will be using this meeting and the discussion and dialogue that we have this afternoon as part of our evidence when we write our report next month. We are not here to talk about the British situation in Europe or all the other topical issues that we sometimes talk about with our European colleagues; we are here very much looking at the External Action Service as an inquiry. We are particularly keen to have a report published, so that when the review takes place, probably starting in the spring through to summer, we are able to contribute positively to it.
I understand you are writing your own report for the same reason. We are coming towards the end of this particular inquiry. We are meeting with our own Europe Minister, Mr
Lidington, later this week to take a Foreign Office view, but we have been talking to academics, to member states and to international organisations to take evidence.
We are trying to come up with conclusions that are useful for the way that the EEAS should move forward after its first years of operation. The European Parliament and you, as a foreign affairs Committee, will have probably far more day-to-day experience of the External
Action Service than we do as a national parliament. We are very interested in your views about how the EEAS has succeeded so far, through building the Service while having a number of external challenges, and where you think it should go in the future, as well as 3 particularly your own relationship with the EEAS, the High Representative and any of your own thoughts around national parliaments and their role in terms of scrutiny and its work with the national parliaments.
I have with me Lord Lamont, Lord Foulkes and Lord Radice. We are also a reflection of UK politics fairly well, in terms of two Labour Members, one Liberal Democrat and a
Conservative—no UKIP, I am afraid, with us today. We do have two Members of UKIP in the House of Lords. There are no Cross-Benchers, who are an important independent part of the House of Lords. Otherwise, we are here.
Elmar Brok: A pro-European delegation. Thank you very much. We also have Mr Danjean; he is our chairman of the Sub-Committee on Security and Defence, also he has a speciality an EU commissioner. Also the Greens are here and the Communists, so I think all the groups are represented here.
Let me make a short remark about why the EEAS was set up. Mr Gualtieri and I are the reporters of the Parliament for the review process. This EEAS and the position of the High
Representative and Vice-President of the Commission were set up in order to get synergy effects and save money in the long run. We had, in the past, a foreign relations commissioner with money and a staff. We had a High Representative, Mr Solana, with the right to negotiate but without staff and money. Every half a year, we had a new president of the Foreign Ministers Council. Now we have that put together in the hands of Lady Ashton, in order to get synergy effects and have political and economic synergy effects. This does not apply fully at the moment due to different reasons, but the structural reasons are that this cannot work fully because to build this up over two years—it has been only two years— and to form an office fully is very difficult. Also, we had to merge the Commission people who are out of the Commission and foreign service, so the Commission has fewer civil servants in that field. The old civil servants in foreign relations for the Commission were 4 part of the development. Council people moved there, so there are fewer in the Council in that field, and member state representatives, in order to increase the influence of the member states and to get their experience. That is the idea behind it. It has coherence for five years, also in the leadership of the Council. It is ridiculous that foreign policy and defence questions have, every half a year, someone else there. For a smaller country, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be invited to the Oval Office. But there was no strategy. This was the general idea; it was a constitutional convention and later I think an inter-governmental conference.
The procedure for that—I was a member of the inter-governmental conference, both for the constitutional treaty and for the Lisbon treaty—was an especially long debate with the
British Foreign Ministers in those meetings. The compromise we found is the compromise of 26 with Britain, when I read into the result that we have. This should be taken into consideration when we make a judgment. I am not able to make a final judgment about that, because it is too soon to judge it, but I see certain advantages now already. We have to continue them to have real synergy effects. The shortcomings, which are always there in such a situation, we have to find in the review process and we have to make changes. But there is one point where it is not fast enough in Brussels and where the political will of member countries is lacking. I will give you one example: Mali.
In October, it was decided to set up a mission to train Mali’s army and police. Now, as the crisis exploded two weeks ago, we have found out that, despite it having been decided, member states were still considering how to do that. That is not so much a fault of you but of member states, including my own member state, which found out at the end of the day that two aeroplanes to transport non-French soldiers—indeed, a hypocrisy itself—were set up. We also have to see how far the political will goes and the commitment of member states to compositions, because in all these questions the interests of all our countries are 5 involved. It is not in the British interests, the German interests or the Italian interests to have a new al-Qaeda resort in that part of the world. It is in our common interest.
Therefore, we have to think of how we can organise decision-making faster and implementation even faster. Here we have shortcomings, because it is not developed enough, but also because of a lack of political will from member states, especially on the question of implementation. That is the main message I will try to send to the review. This is a proposal if colleague Gualtieri and Parliament agrees to that. We have to debate to make that better. That is the main point of this question. Surely we have to discuss technical questions with the budget, how to do that and how to make it more practical, where the European budget and national budgets are concerned. When it comes to military questions, Mr Danjean will probably say something about that. We have to see whether the mixture of staff is right and how it works. We have to make initiatives so that the old borders between Commission civil servants and Council civil servants can be overcome, and how the Commission tries to defend the fields that it should not defend.
The High Representative should also field that herself more as Vice-President of the
Commission, to tackle that question from that side. These are the questions we have to discuss and we are very interested in your opinions about that. I am sure that you will make a lot of proposals about that and that we can learn from them. The Foreign Office is still the best foreign office in the world. Mr Danjean will say the Quai d’Orsay is. I am not sure, but they are close to each other. Therefore, I am also very interested in your advice, so perhaps we can tackle this issue together to make things better than they were before.
I have seen that you have run twice in Edinburgh. I lived in Edinburgh in the 1960s and
1970s, so I feel very close to it.
Q230 Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: It is one of the nicest cities in the world, is it not?
Thank you very much indeed. We have had a lot of evidence so far, and most of the 6 evidence seems to point to the fact that the EEAS is relatively new; it has had teething troubles, but it does not need very much radical change. I am led to believe that you and your Committee might be more enthusiastic about more radical change—that you might want to strengthen it, give it more power, more money and more responsibility. I wondered if that was the way you were thinking and whether you could elaborate on it.
Elmar Brok: We want to strengthen it by doing the work better. To give it more power is not possible, because of the power enshrined in the treaty of Lisbon, full stop. That is the point.
Q231 Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: For example, we have had a number of people suggest that Cathy Ashton has got far too much work to do. She is overburdened with work and she needs a deputy. I know that has been a matter of consideration, but we have a lot of people expressing some doubt and concerns and reservations about that. Again, I wondered if that was an area where you were encouraging development.
Elmar Brok: This was a proposal of the European Parliament to have democratic accountability. Because of the workload she has, she cannot do everything alone. There are so many conferences around. She has the same demand to go to places as the Secretary of
State, and therefore we have to give her working conditions for that. There is also the question of going to Parliament; it is a problem in such a position to go regularly to
Parliament and report to Committees and the Plenary. Here we said she should find the solutions. The result until now has been that, in certain cases, the relevant commissioners have acted as substitutes.
Also, I believe that she should use more Special Representatives, in certain cases Foreign
Ministers. That could be very useful in dealing with the political side. We have, for example, an agreement this afternoon. If she is not able to report herself from the Foreign Ministers’
Council to this House and to this Committee, which has to be done after every Foreign 7
Ministers’ meeting, it will be done by the Foreign Minister from the presidential country. Mr
Gilmore from Ireland will be at this Committee this afternoon to do that job for her. We have to come to more coherent relationships to do that. Should we now give the chance to make short remarks to Mr Danjean, and then Mr Gualtieri?
Arnaud Danjean: I will be very brief because my colleagues have a lot to say as well. First, let me tell you that I find your initiative very interesting, and I wish the French Senate could do the same at some point, before talking or writing about Europe without knowing about basics facts, which we can only find here sometimes. I will make three remarks on the EEAS generally speaking and illustrate them with two examples. My first remark would be indulgence, and you said it already when pointing out that the EEAS is relatively young. It is very young, in a field where sharing sovereignty is most sensitive. It is very young; therefore,
I would ask for some indulgence. It is an unprecedented effort to share things in this very specific field of diplomacy, so I would be indulgent.
Secondly, it is not about being revolutionary in trying to make it better. What we witnessed, and Elmar Brok stressed this in his last annual report on the CFSP, is a lack of priority. Let us be clear: it is not only about the External Action Service; it is together with member states. But it is a lack of priorities. We go from one issue to another. Lady Ashton, more specifically, goes from one point to another, one hotspot to another one, one crisis to another, with no sense of priority. That is for me the biggest problem because, from that point, from the lack of priority, you have many consequences, giving the impression sometimes of confusion, of non-efficiency and of uselessness. It is because we do not have priorities. If you take one piece after another, you will find some good things. There are many good points and successes, but the broad picture is not clear enough, so we need to define more priorities. We need the political will and courage to say, “Look, for the coming years, yes, at the Sahel, Mali, Africa, northern Africa or the Arab spring. It is the top 8 priority.” That does not mean that we will neglect our eastern partnerships, the Caucasus,
Ukraine or whatever, but in terms of the nature and the scale of the problem we face, for
Europe, this is the priority. We can set up—I do not know—10, 12 or 15 priorities, and then organise the work of the EEAS that way.
My last general comment is about a problem of leadership. Let me be clear: this is not a critique of Lady Ashton personally. It has nothing to do with that. It is a problem of leadership in the sense that the EEAS is facing member states. Let us be clear and put it bluntly. Too often, we have the answer here, when asking for initiatives, resolutions and decisions, not only from Lady Ashton but from the staff of the EEAS, “Yes, but we do not want to take this initiative because it will be rebuffed by the member states.” So what? Let us try. You have to take ownership of some initiatives. Many times in the past, Solana, who had fewer powers, prerogatives and staff and less money than the current EEAS, took initiatives whatever the member states thought at that time. There is a force of conviction that has to be within the Service, from the head of course but also broader than that.
I have two short points on one success and one failure. One success I would stress is the
Balkans. What is interesting is that, for many years, especially in the 1990s during the
Yugoslav wars, the Balkans were at stake between the member states, and we had a lot of rivalries between the French, British, Germans and so on, following their old politics. Now,
Balkan issues are dealt with by the EEAS and you hardly find this fight of influence between
Britain, France, Italy and so on. Everybody has understood that it is more efficient when it is dealt with within the EEAS. We have an example now in the dialogue about Kosovo and
Serbia, which is dealt with by the EEAS. It is proof of leadership and it works.
One failure, and Elmar mentioned it, is Mali or, a bit broader than Mali, the Sahel, I would say. What is the failure? In 2011, EEAS, together with the member states, wrote an EU strategy for the Sahel—two years ago. What has happened in the mean time? Almost 9 nothing. The strategy was very interesting, because it was part of what we call this comprehensive approach, mixing tools, policies like development, financial aid and humanitarian aid, and security provisions. It was never really put in place because of the problem of merging the cultures, information and procedures of people coming from the
Commission, the Council and national diplomacies. This is a problem we face. When we want to implement ambitious policies, the political will is there, but not enough. The competences are too split and it is difficult to put all that together. There we need leadership internally for the EEAS to implement what has been decided.
Elmar Brok: We have a lot of speakers on our side. Perhaps we will make it all around, but please limit it. Roberto, you are the master of limited. Knock yourself out with the time of your speech.
Roberto Gualtieri: Thank you, distinguished Members of the House of Lords for this very important and interesting opportunity to share our views on the EEAS. I do not think we are going to ask for revolutionary changes in this structure. On the contrary, the solution that was found during the last negotiation is good in terms of institutional powers to define a service, not an institution, as the service of the external action of the Union and implementation of a comprehensive approach. The idea is to have a service that is not part of the Commission, because otherwise we would have lost the CSDP structures, but on the contrary a service that includes the CSDP structures but is closely linked with the
Commission, in order to be able potentially to implement a truly comprehensive approach to putting in coherence with the various different tools that the Union has, from trade to development to crisis management to ordinary geographic-based foreign policy. The solution on paper is a good one, I think. I do not think we are going to propose major changes. On the contrary, the problem is how to make this solution work fully and how to correct some problems that, so far, block better development. 10
Of course, I fully agree with Elmar Brok that we need time, to be indulgent—to know that it is a major achievement to build up such big structures and to merge the diplomatic culture of different member states, the Council and the Commission. It is a huge challenge but, of course, there is something that has to be fine-tuned—the various different elements. I want to be brief but, for example, this problem of having, on the one hand, the Secretary-General but, on the other hand, someone in charge of administration is something that has to be checked. The effort to make the different elements of the Service work concretely together has to be strengthened. The problem of how the Service helps advise the President and the
High Representative to do their job fully, which on paper is to co-ordinate the external action activities of the Commission, is not the risk; now we have an EEAS too detached from the Commission. There could be a limit to his capacity to orient a full comprehensive approach. We have the problem of deputies; that is clearly a problem that I think we will raise. We have some elements, but I think our philosophy would be to correct the single problems more than propose a major revolution in its structure, knowing that there are a lot of things that are not working well.
I have given some examples, but there are also some interesting things starting to happen.
For example, I think that the delegations are starting to prove their added value on the ground and to be the real places where we have a single place for the Union there. They are starting to create stable relationships. It is something that, from below, could have a good impact in the medium to long term. We are also seeing, for example, some small and medium states starting to use the delegation to provide some elements of service that they do not have. It is a positive process, and we have to encourage it to solve some administrative problems we have in the delegations, especially the small ones. This would be our kind of approach. Of course, the new conference of the CFSP that we, in the end, 11 agreed to establish would also be a place where we might have some important exchange of views structurally on this issue. Thank you.
Véronique De Keyser: Thank you for this introduction. Thank you, President, and I welcome the visit from our distinguished colleagues. It is a very good idea to exchange. I am from the Socialist group, so of course I would like to be honest about the problem we tackle. We are assessing here the EEAS, and not necessarily Cathy Ashton, even if the two are closely linked. In my opinion, if we are thinking about added value to the past, which is to say the Solana time, Solana was maybe more vocal than Cathy Ashton presently. He had a very small Service, but he was much more political in a sense. Here, my first problem is the difference between what we have, which is to say a huge diplomatic service, and what we would like to have, which is a political line. We do not have a political line through at least this instrument and the High Representative. We have a super-diplomatic service with a very good diplomat. Cathy Ashton is a very good diplomat; she is going everywhere, talking to everybody, but she is not a political person giving a line and she does not have the tools for that. There is no intelligence service, defence or presence of other governments, so it is very difficult to expect Cathy Ashton to be a politician, in the sense that we would like, but she is a supra-diplomat.
On the question—and my last point—of the flexibility of the structure, I totally agree with
Elmar when he said, “It is too slow, far too slow,” etc. The question of Mali was a perfect example. Cathy Ashton tried to introduce flexibility to the structure, but she has created more confusion, in the sense that you have the hierarchical structure of the EEAS and then you have the taskforce, a different horizontal force. It is very flexible and very close to
Cathy. Now, with this double structure, there is really more confusion about who is doing what. Of course, the task force is much more flexible; of course, it is close to Cathy
Ashton, but the EEAS is a hierarchical service, and we have to take this double structure into 12 account when we assess the Service. In my opinion, it is a very bad answer to a very good question. Thank you.
Tarja Cronberg: Thank you, and good luck for your review. I have two short observations, one as a member of a small member country, Finland, and the second as the chair of the Iran delegation. I agree that there is no need for revolution, but there might be some need to revise the mandate. The mandate is characterised by co-ordination, complementarity and consensus—the three Cs. This poses some problems if the expectations are innovative and the approach is new initiatives and strategic thinking. Within this mandate, there seems to be no place for this kind of dynamic approach.
One of the things that small countries, also mine, have been saying is that, with the External
Action Service, the small countries decline in influence. They have less influence. When there was a six months’ chairmanship, everybody was dynamic, thinking about new ideas and trying to do something. Now, it has decreased into a more bureaucratic mess. This is probably true: there is continuity but there is less dynamism.
On the question of Iran, the High Representative is very well placed in these negotiations, leading the Iran nuclear issue and negotiations for the P5+1. This is of course an extremely important position. There she could do something very unique and try to find new approaches, which are expected and which are not forthcoming. There is a need for a special European standpoint and a regional approach, which is coming from the think tanks now. Everybody is looking at Europe; could you provide something special here? There seems to be a stalemate in that situation. The mandate needs to be revised in some ways to allow for dynamism, initiative and strategic thinking. Thank you.
Sir Graham Watson: I welcome their Lordships’ initiative to come and have dialogue with us. Chairman, I will endeavour to be brief. I am one of those who has shared some of the criticisms made of Baroness Ashton, but I also have considerable sympathy with Baroness 13
Ashton, because she has been required to establish a service at the same time as running its policy. That is rather like being expected to play a public concert on the violin and having to learn the instrument as you go along. These are early days. We have only really just completed the recruitment to the Service. Two-thirds of those recruited have come directly from the member states—one-third from the Commission, one-third from the member states’ services and one-third from the Council, which is, after all, essentially made up of member states’ services. We need to establish a culture in that organisation.
We have been much helped by the process of Lisbonisation, the process by which the
European Union representation in the capital city of every third country now co-ordinates the work of the embassies of the member states. This is not replacing the member states’ services, but it is partly in recognition of the fact that only two member states currently maintain embassies in more than 65% of the third countries, just the United Kingdom and
Germany. The others do not maintain a representation in even 65% of third countries. The advantage of Lisbonisation, and the advantage to all the member states and to the Union, is that one speaks for 500 million people. When one applies sanctions, those sanctions are far more effective because they apply over a community of 27 member states. When the High
Representative wishes to engage in dialogue with the Secretary of State for the United States of America, he or she can do so with no problems. Indeed, the relations between
Cathy Ashton and Hillary Clinton were extremely good, and I hope she will enjoy equally good relations with her successor. Briefly, in reply to the point made by Lord Foulkes, it is not so much a question of giving the External Action Service more powers; it is a question of giving the External Action Service the licence that it needs to develop, in consultation with the member states, the authority to speak for the European Union.
Charles Tannock: Thank you, Mr Chairman, and also a warm welcome to their lordships.
In fact, this is the second delegation from the House of Lords I have spoken before in the 14 last month. We had Tim Boswell come over recently and take a hearing on the issue of enlargement, particularly the western Balkans. I share much of what Sir Graham said. I think it is a work in progress. On balance, it has probably been reasonably successful given the constraints that Cathy Ashton faced in setting up a new service at the time, not just of having to learn on the job, because she does not have a background in international relations as such, but also of the eurozone crisis and the existential crisis of the whole European project.
One of the things that I found particularly helpful, and I have to say this is down to
Elmar Brok and Mr Gualtieri to a certain extent, is the de facto power or tradition we have acquired in this Committee, which is actually superior to almost all member state parliaments for their national diplomatic service, of having confirmation hearings for all the
EUSRs and most of the senior diplomatic appointments to head the delegations. This has been an extremely useful way for us to hear what these ambassadors have to say. I have to say the career diplomats, particularly from the national foreign services, which are about a third, have been of excellent calibre. I am not convinced by the argument that Cathy needs a proper deputy. I was impressed last week in Strasbourg, where she had the Europe
Minister for Ireland speaking on the foreign affairs debate on Mali, Syria and Iraq. To use the member state Foreign Ministers, their deputy Foreign Ministers, the commissioners or whoever happens to be available, the relevant commissioner, happens to be quite a good model that works and gives you an eclectic flavour of what is going on. Of course, she has
Pierre Vimont, who seems to be effectively her deputy in many respects. He is always there advising in the background.
The Service, by and large, has been reactive, not proactive. As a British Conservative, I welcome that. I do not want somebody stopping the traffic lights necessarily. It should be a cipher mechanism for the, as it were, distilled views of 27 member states. I actually asked 15 the British PSC Ambassador what his assessment was after a couple of years, and he said, on balance, certainly in terms of UK interests, it has served the United Kingdom positively. My main concern on this Committee has been to scrutinise value for money, particularly budget neutrality and the fact that the Service is asking for inflation-busting rises, which is clearly unacceptable. There is plenty of fat that can be cut. I am intrigued by the issue of consular service. They want to expand to have consular service. The UK generally opposes this, but smaller countries actually see value added.
One of the ways that the Service could give good account for itself, in terms of saving money from the national budgets, particularly of the smaller and medium-sized states, would be to see co-location of their heads of mission within, perhaps, EU delegations, or for non-accredited ambassadors, when they are visiting that capital, to use the desks and secretarial back-up of the EU delegations when conducting bilateral business. The UK, for instance, co-locates its high commission in South Sudan in Juba in the EU compound. I am just giving examples of added value for money for the External Action Service. To summarise, one of the most powerful things, as you noted, your Lordships, is the power of
English that has united the Service. Everybody so far has spoken in English and the whole
Service works on English.
Elmar Brok: I did not know that. That makes me suspicious. Sir Robert, please.
Sir Robert Atkins: It is very good to see some of my parliamentary colleagues over here, particularly those with whom I acted, so to speak, within the Commons over numerous years and, indeed, one of my former bosses, in Lord Lamont. It is good to see you and thank you for coming. I do not want to duplicate what has already been said but to pick out one or two points. First and foremost, duplication is key. As a broadly Euro-realistic British
MEP, I have been pretty cynical about the EEAS from its inception. Cathy Ashton has had an impossible task in setting it up, although, if you come from Wigan in north-west England, you 16 can usually cope with many of the problems of the rest of the world. This is nothing as to coping with London. In practical terms, she has made a good fist of it and she has been supported by some very good people, but that duplication factor is one that concerns me, not only in cost terms but also in terms of the people you are dealing with.
I am pretty heavily involved in Middle East activities on the Palestine delegation. Certainly when I go out there, to Gaza or the West Bank, the people that we have in place are first rate from the EEAS point of view, which is useful but it does duplicate the effort of the people I bump into from the British Foreign Office and, I would guess, the French, German,
Spanish and so on. Other member states have a similar problem. That is something we have not yet resolved. As my French colleague was saying, and I think Elmar as well, this is a new organisation and it has to settle down. In that circumstance, from my experience of the
British Foreign Office when I was in the House of Commons and a Minister, it depended very largely on personalities—the way that they behaved within the various countries and how they were regarded. Charles has said that there are some very good people within the
EEAS, and I hope that long continues, because the personalities they represent will be key to how they are received, both in the countries they are in and also when they reflect their knowledge to us and to Cathy Ashton.
The second thing is the issues. If you take the Middle East, for example, the most impossible policy area that we can find, there is no agreement at all anywhere within the European
Union. How, therefore, does a diplomat within the EEAS reflect that concern, and what does he or she have to say to us to cope with that? My final point, Chairman, is of course the cost. We are faced with a time of austerity and we do worry greatly about some of the excesses that are in prospect or, in some cases, in reality. That is something that we have to look at extremely carefully. I hope your Lordships will give that as much consideration as some of the other issues raised. Thank you. 17
Lord Radice: Thank you very much, Chairman. We have heard some extremely interesting contributions from Members of the European Parliament. If I could just make one or two points, these are very early days for the EEAS. It is a work in progress and, therefore, we have to take that into consideration. What we have been looking for in our enquiries and the evidence, and will be looking for in our report, is to see whether or not it is beginning to add value. That is going to be our main criterion.
I would like to say three things. First, I think it has great possibilities in bringing people together. We have heard one or two criticisms regarding Cathy Ashton and her style of doing it, but most people who know her know that she is a very good diplomat and she is able to create consensus. Of course, it is always far more difficult in situations where there is no consensus. The Middle East has already been mentioned, and we could mention Libya too, which was a big issue when she started off in her job.
Secondly, the EEAS does give you a chance to co-ordinate foreign policy with other issues such as trade and development. It enables you to put together packages. My French colleague on my left was saying that Mali or the Sahel had been a failure. Well, let us wait and see about that. We can see that, in the Horn of Africa, an approach of putting together different aspects of foreign policy does give the EU a better chance of helping to solve problems.
One last point is a matter that has concerned us and is bound to do so in a time of cost-cutting and so on. A worldwide diplomatic service: the question is if the EEAS needs that. If you look from a big-state point of view, you might say you have one of your own, for
France, Germany and Britain. If you look at it from the smaller states’ point of view, they are able to get a much better idea and get involved in a number of issues that they would not otherwise be able to get involved in. That is part of the point of the European Union.
We have to balance those two issues together. I would like to end by thanking you very 18 much indeed, Mr Chairman, and your colleagues and Members, for all the things you have said. We will clearly be taking them into consideration when we come to make our report.
Q232 Lord Lamont of Lerwick: I really wanted to ask a question. It is just to say I very much agreed with what Sir Robert Atkins said, not just because we were former close colleagues but because I thought he spoke a lot of sense when he talked about duplication. I would put it another way and ask where the added value is, but I thought he identified some real points. Not surprisingly, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to be at this
Parliament, there is a completely different perspective from ours. I was very struck both by what Sir Graham said and Mr Gualtieri said. Sir Graham, I think it was, called for the EEAS to have the authority to speak for the EU. Mr Gualtieri, I think, used the phrase “take ownership” in order to be able to have initiatives on your own. Perhaps I got it the wrong way round. However, this of course is a very different approach from the pillared approach to foreign policy, the inter-governmental approach to foreign policy, which is what we in the
UK very much believe in. That is my general view of it.
I would like to ask a question though, because the relationship of the EEAS with this
Parliament is very important. I wondered what you thought about the accountability of the
EEAS to this Parliament. I believe there has been some talk of having further powers over the EEAS. What would you like to see in terms of improved accountability to this
Parliament?
Elmar Brok: That was settled in the so-called Madrid agreement between the Council, Lady
Ashton and the European Parliament, with the involvement of the Commission. The treaty is clear, and therefore we have also clarified that the EEAS has to report to the Parliament.
The budget is part of the community budget. There are full budgetary rights of the
European Parliament in that—who controls it, the personnel, the budget and so on. The part that is given for military missions by the member states is the responsibility of the 19 member states and their parliaments. We believe that foreign policy is an executive thing.
We do not want, as a parliament, to do the operation of foreign policy. That is a classical executive responsibility, but we would like on our level the right of control, which also includes the final weapon, the budget weapon. We also have the right that in, more or less, every third country, the agreement and treaty of the European Union must be ratified by the
European Parliament, for nearly everything, not only trade. This also makes clear that this
Committee, the Trade Committee and the Development Policy Committee together play a crucial role when it comes to results.
We now continue our session here. We have today a discussion on the Balkans and reports on enlargement. The next point will be the question of Kosovo. It shows that we have practical work, but we know that there are different responsibilities and we also need better information between national parliaments and the European Parliament when we want to control our respective executive bodies at home or in Brussels. We should have closer co-operation. That is not to change the decision-making level. Everyone should take the decision, and the decision has been taken because of constitutional reasons or treaty reasons. We had in Cyprus last year the first session of the European national parliaments.
We will have the second one in March in Dublin. I hope that this body will become such a discussion and consultative body, without decision-making rights, where we can have this exchange of views between national parliamentarians and European parliamentarians to make us stronger towards the executive branches at every level. Here, it is in the common interests of further co-operation.
Thank you very much. I would like to invite you to stay if you have some time. You can stay at your seats there, follow and, if you like, participate in our debate when it comes to
Kosovo, because it is also our opinion that this Committee is always open, with or without invitation, to every member of the respective Committee of the national parliaments with 20 full speaking rights, when friends from national parliaments are here. This is also part of our way of co-operation and of office. Thank you very much. Please, you are invited to stay here as long as it is possible for you.
The Chairman: President, perhaps I can just respond very quickly and say, unfortunately, we have to go off and meet another member of the EEAS, in terms of our other witness.
Thank you. We really appreciate that you and your Members have given us some very good evidence and views. Some of the things that have come up today are certainly what we are looking at, in terms of prioritisation, in terms of speed of decision-making and in terms of making the job of the High Representative doable without treaty changes. There is also the aspect of the small member states; we are not looking at this just from a United Kingdom point of view at all. We know that they are very different agendas, but we are looking at this area of added value and how the EEAS can be a success within its budgetary limits.
Thank you, President. You will all be featured in our report, which we look forward to forwarding to you in due course.
Elmar Brok: Thank you very much for being here. Have a nice stay here in Brussels.