Ashton shows her hand

THE LOSER

The main loser in the turf wars over the EEAS has been the European Parliament – a point made clear by a cross-party group of senior MEPs, who have called Ashton's proposal “not acceptable”.

The group includes Elmar Brok, a German Christian Democrat, and Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Liberal ALDE group, who had presented a counterproposal on 23 March, two days before Ashton presented her proposal. In their statement, the MEPs criticised the proposed management of the EU's development assistance, arguing that the “artificial separation” between policymaking and execution would lead to incoherence. Other perceived shortcomings related to accountability and personnel. They were critical of the decision not to make the EEAS politically accountable to the Parliament and argued that the proposed organisational set-up would make the service's secretary-general “omnipotent”.

Under Ashton's proposal, the secretary-general would be responsible for the day-to-day management of the EEAS, aided by two deputies, all of them EEAS officials. In their proposal, Brok and Verhofstadt had asked for three “political” deputies to represent Ashton in dealings with the Parliament and foreign governments.

The battle for jobs

Now that the months of wrangling between the EU's institutions about the shape of the EEAS are over, the fighting over the top jobs can begin in earnest. For the time being, the battle for the 32 senior posts currently vacant in the EU's 136 embassies – 29 as head of delegation and three as deputy head – will be conducted through a version of the existing mechanism, in which choices are made by a selection panel consisting of officials from various services within the European Commission.

Each panel will also include representatives of two member states. In the words of one diplomat, this is to ensure a “transparent procedure”. The transparent purpose, though, is to prevent the Commission appointing too many of its own officials.

A senior official from a smaller member state predicted that member states' diplomats would secure a “considerable share” of the 32 senior posts, in part because the bulk of staff at the EEAS's headquarters in Brussels would initially come from the Commission and the secretariat-general of the Council of Ministers.

After a transition period expected to run through to 2012, a new selection procedure will be introduced. This will be led by the EEAS and is supposed to give at least one-third of senior EEAS jobs to member states' diplomats. Ashton's proposal is that recruitment should be “based on merit and on the broadest possible geographical basis...with due regard for gender balance”.

Eventually, most of the 11 EU special representatives (EUSRs) will also serve as heads of delegation and be appointed in the same fashion. Two – in Macedonia and in Addis Abeba, working with the African Union – have occupied both roles for some time. They will be joined today (1 April) by Vygaudas Ušackas, Ashton's first such appointee, who will serve as the EUSR for Afghanistan and head of the delegation in Kabul. Possible exceptions to this process of ‘double-hatting' are EUSRs whose responsibility includes several countries (Pierre Morel, in central Asia) and those who simultaneously hold other international offices (Valentin Inzko in Bosnia).