Shopping cartThe Hague Journal of Diplomacy
Volumes & issues:
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The Emerging EU Diplomatic System: Opportunities and Challenges after ‘Lisbon’
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To What Ends EU Foreign Policy? Contending Approaches to the Union’s Diplomatic Objectives and Representation
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Summary The strengthened Office of the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the new European External Action Service (EEAS) presuppose a set of interests and/or values that the European Union (EU) wishes to pursue on the world stage. But what are those interests and/or values and how does the EU reach agreement on them? Rather than simply ‘cutting and pasting’ from EU treaties and strategy papers, this article identifies seven distinct theoretical models of how the EU and its member states arrive collectively at a definition of their diplomatic objectives. The seven models include intergovernmentalist models of veto threats and log-rolling, normative institutionalist models of cooperative bargaining and entrapment, and constructivist and sociological institutionalist models of elite socialization, Europeanization and collective identity formation. The article identifies the logics of each model and notes their implications for the role of the EU’s new foreign policy institutions.
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The EU and International Diplomatic Law: New Horizons?
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Summary
The European Union has a unique sui generis status on the international plane, which is reflected in its capability to enter into diplomatic relations with third states and international organizations. Over nearly six decades, the European Union (EU) has gradually built its own worldwide bilateral and multilateral diplomatic network, which is made subject — through specific agreements with the host country — to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The ‘Union delegations’ are now operating as the diplomatic missions of the EU as a whole, in contrast to the former Commission delegations. This article examines the relationship between the EU and international diplomatic law. How does the EU establish and conduct diplomatic relations? What legal instruments are being used? How do the Vienna Convention and customary diplomatic law come into play? What is the exact legal status of EU ambassadors and diplomatic staff? By critically analysing these issues, this article assesses the specific contribution the EU makes to the further development of international diplomatic law.
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What’s in a Name? Challenges to the Creation of EU Delegations
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Summary
One of the Lisbon Treaty’s most significant innovations was the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), which changed the EU’s functioning not only in Brussels, but also around the world. Zooming in on the multilateral context of the UN in New York, this article examines the new EU delegations and highlights the main challenges that are inherent in their establishment. These delegations could be engrafted upon a wide network of European Commission delegations, yet the literature gives little indication of success in integrating the functions and actors. Adding to the literature and building upon interviews with policy officials in both Brussels and New York, this article indicates an additional external challenge in implementing Lisbon’s provisions, with the context of the UN General Assembly raising more fundamental questions on status and membership — questions that have also shaped the role of the EU delegation to the UN during its first year of operation.
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The European External Action Service and the European Parliament
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Summary Despite considerable academic attention on the European External Action Service (EEAS), only a few studies have touched upon its relationship with the European Parliament. This article looks into the relationship between the EEAS, its High Representative and the European Parliament. It pays particular attention to the question of whether — during the making of the EEAS — the European Parliament was able to expand its parliamentary oversight in external relations along the lines of legislative, supervisory and budgetary powers.
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The European External Action Service:A Pivotal Actor in EU Foreign Policy Communications?
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Summary This article analyses the role of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in EU foreign policy communications. Having cumulated a number of pre-existing functions, the EEAS is situated at the centre of the existing communication systems used in the European Union in relation to matters of foreign policy. Moreover, the EEAS is contributing to the expansion of the existing practice of foreign policy communications in three ways. First, it has affected the direction of communication flows in the most well-established (but now declining) communication system — the COREU/CORTESY network — as a growing proportion of messages now originate in Brussels. Second, the EEAS is developing an autonomous EU capacity for information gathering, as EU delegations regularly draft political reports. Third, the EEAS has contributed to the expansion of information sharing in consular affairs, which is an area of mixed and contested competences. The EEAS is thus a key actor in EU foreign policy communications, although practices are forever shifting and its role is still under construction.
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Diplomatic Training and the Challenges Facing the EEAS
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Summary Following a difficult birth, the European External Action Service (EEAS) is now a much scrutinized reality. Much of the analysis has concentrated on its quasi-institutional nature, its relations with the principal external action actors in the European Union and beyond, as well as the question of its legal capacity. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the important training dimensions, which are critical to the smooth development of the Service, especially considering the disparate backgrounds of EEAS constituents. This article argues that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to the training dilemma. Differentiation rather than standardization, within the constraints of a programme (rather than a full-blown European Diplomatic Academy), will be the salient features of the first years of training in the EEAS. It is also argued that training can be a key strategic tool for the Service’s development and, more generally, the external relations of the EU itself.
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The Early Days of the European External Action Service: A Practitioner’s View
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Summary
The proposal to create the European External Action Service (EEAS) seemed to be an acceptance by the European Union’s political elites that, in the post-Westphalian world, more attention needed to be given to collective European diplomacy rather than individual national diplomacy. Yet there was no guarantee that existing officials, whether from EU institutions or from the EU member states, would easily accept the related diplomatic norms and values. Melding different epistemic communities into one effective new diplomatic community is not a foregone conclusion. Europe’s new diplomatic service ‘an sich’ is not a diplomatic service ‘für sich’. While creating a team with a spirit of unity was the formal goal, ambiguities in the Lisbon Treaty’s articles on the EEAS have facilitated a major reassertion of bureaucratic politics, which are destined to keep Westphalian diplomacy alive and to produce even more turf battles and complexity. The mind-sets of the component parts of the EEAS are so diverse that, without serious discussion of these issues and concentrated training, creating a new European diplomacy will be difficult.
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