EU consensus emerges over leading EEAS posts

A consensus is emerging in Brussels about who will lead the European Union's diplomatic service, though those appointments will not be made until MEPs have given their consent to the service's legal and financial structures.

The deadline to submit applications for the ten most senior positions in the European External Action Service (EEAS) closed on Monday (6 September), and Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, is to hold interviews with candidates over the coming weeks.

But the distribution of the four top posts beneath her is effectively already settled. The EEAS is to be managed by a board chaired by Ashton, comprising a secretary-general with two deputies and a head of administration.

Pierre Vimont, France's ambassador to the United States, is pencilled in for the post of secretary-general. Germany's Helga Schmid, who heads the policy unit in the secretariat of the Council of Ministers, and Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Poland's minister for Europe, are lined up to be his deputies. Ireland's David O'Sullivan, currently the Commission's director-general for trade and before that the Commission's secretary-general, is a strong contender to oversee the service's administration.

This distribution of posts would help Ashton achieve a balance between officials from different EU institutions, between small and big member states, and – taking into account her own post – give two out of five jobs to women.

The Commission will next Wednesday (15 September) propose an outline budget for the EU's new diplomatic service, which will allow negotiations to begin between the Commission, the member states and MEPs on the provisions for the EEAS in the 2011 budget. An official said that a more detailed budget for 2011 would be developed once the management of the EEAS was in place.

The budget, which takes the form of a proposal to amend the EU's budget for 2011, makes assumptions about how many new jobs are created and how many posts are to be transferred from Commission and Council. Last month, the Council secretariat estimated that 411 officials will be transferred from the Council to the EEAS at the beginning of next year, at a cost of €45.9 million for 2011. Around 1,100 Commission officials will also be transferred to the EEAS and 100 new posts created.

But the Parliament has yet to give its approval to a start-up budget of around €9.5m for the service in 2010 and to amending the EU's staff and financial regulations. That approval is not expected until October or November and until then Ashton cannot officially make the ten most senior appointments. The heads of the service's six thematic and geographical departments – for the Middle East and the EU's southern neighbours, Russia and the EU's neighbours to the east, Africa, the Americas, Asia, and multilateral issues – are being recruited at the same time as the management board of four.

MEPs are unhappy about what they see as a lack of transparency, particularly about the budget. Ingeborg Grässle, a German centre-right MEP, said she had doubts about posts currently in the Council and Commission being assigned more senior grades (and so higher pay) while they were being transferred to the EEAS.

“I have many, many questions, especially on the upgrading of positions,” she said. “I do not want the EEAS to trigger a wave of promotions.”

Recruitment of the first 29 heads and deputy heads of the EU's delegations abroad is almost complete, and Ashton is to announce these appointments as early as next week. Three posts of head of delegation are to be re-advertised, according to an official, because no suitable candidates have been found. At the end of the month or early in October, another 25 or so delegation posts are to be advertised.