Budget casts shadow over launch of EEAS

Appointments

Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, is to appoint in the coming weeks the heads of the EEAS's six geographic and thematic departments. They are expected to include Hugues Mingarelli and Stefano Sannino, currently deputy directors-general of the Commission's department for external relations; Tomás Duplá del Moral, a director in the same department; Christian Leffler, the Commission's deputy director-general for development; and Miroslav Lajcák, until recently Slovakia's foreign minister. Ashton is currently holding interviews for these positions.

The appointment of Claude-France Arnould, the current head of the Council secretariat's directorate for crisis management and planning, as the new chief executive of the European Defence Agency (EDA) hangs in the balance. Italy has withheld its backing because it wants the job to go to Carlo Magrassi, the EDA's deputy chief executive. Magrassi has been standing in since Alexander Weis, a German, left last month. The EDA is not part of the EEAS, which will have at least one senior Italian official – Agostino Miozzo – as crisis co-ordinator.

Ashton announced on Tuesday (23 November) that Angelos Pangratis would be the head of the EU's delegation to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva. Pangratis, a Greek national, is currently deputy head of the EU's delegation in Washington, DC and will serve as the EU's chief trade negotiator at the WTO, overseeing a delegation that will largely consist of Commission officials rather than EEAS staff since trade is a Commission competence. The EU is to have another delegation in Geneva dealing primarily with the United Nations and its agencies; its head is to be named in the coming weeks.

Ambassadors' hearings

On Tuesday (30 November), MEPs on the foreign affairs committee will hold a discussion with Philip Dimitrov, a former Bulgarian prime minister who has been appointed as the EU's next ambassador to Georgia. Dimitrov's appearance is the first in a series agreed between the committee and Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief. The following day, Markus Ederer, a German who has been appointed ambassador to China, and Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, an Austrian who is to be the new ambassador to Japan, will appear before the committee. Angelina Eichhorst, the new ambassador to Lebanon, and Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, the new ambassador to Pakistan, will follow in December and January. Eichhorst is Dutch, Wigemark is Swedish.

MEPs have no authority over the appointment of EU ambassadors, and Parliament officials were careful to describe the format of the meetings as an “exchange of views” rather than a hearing. They are to take place behind closed doors, as requested by Ashton, who had previously forbidden newly-appointed ambassadors to appear at public hearings scheduled by MEPs without consultation.