It’s never easy to persuade governments to stump up millions of euros to hire yet more bureaucrats and kit out another building in Brussels. But this autumn must be one of the worst times in decades to try. After nine months in the job, Catherine Ashton, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, remains homeless, without a building for her new diplomatic service or many staff to put in it. But she is getting little sympathy from national capitals. That’s not surprising since, around the EU, national civil servants have seen their pay—or their jobs—cut in the new period of austerity.
Meanwhile in Brussels, Eurocrats are protected by a statute that relates their salaries to the average of those in member states the previous year. So life has gone on very much as normal. None of which has helped Ashton’s plea for funds to set up “Europe’s state department.” Her main target is a new building on the Schuman roundabout, in the heart of Brussels’ “European quarter.” But, as has been pointed out to her, it’s not as if the EU is short of prime-location property. A few years ago a shiny new structure was built on the rue de la Loi which, at the time, was expected to house the new EU foreign ministry. It has since been christened the Lex building and occupied by legal translators who the council (the institution that represents member states) is in no rush to evict. On the other side of the road is the equally shiny, if slightly older, Charlemagne building, where the European commission’s existing foreign policy people reside. But this also houses officials from other directorates, like trade, who would have to be turfed out. And in any case the rent would probably be higher than the new building, which could cost around €60m (£50m) to lease and equip.
Then there is the question of extra staff, without whom the whole idea of a European diplomatic service will be pretty ineffectual. Ashton says she is aiming for 10 per cent efficiency gains by combining functions in Brussels but tense discussions lie ahead. The obvious answer is to use the new European External Action Service to rationalise some diplomatic functions carried out by member states—consular services for example. But that is politically tricky for Britain, which insists the new service will not take on any of the roles of national governments. All of which is causing officials to ask: does Europe actually want the new foreign ministry it created?
ASHTON'S FRENCH LESSONS
There was more than normal interest in Ashton’s first press conference after the end of the summer break. The attention, of course, was not over what she might say but the language she would say it in. Goaded by the French government, Ashton agreed to take classes over the summer so that she could address the world’s media in la langue de Molière. This turned out to be a more complicated diplomatic and presentational decision than at first suspected. Ashton was invited to the luxurious Château Correnson in the south of France by the French government. But while two of her press team took up the offer, Ashton decided against it. The reason, aides said, related to her diary—rather than to any impression this might create of the high representative being summoned by the French to spend her holidays learning their language at their school.
Ashton opted for a course in England instead. The jury is still out on whether this was a good decision. At her press conference she started to tackle one question in French. But after a couple of sentences, she reverted to her mother tongue in the interest, she said, of precision. What’s the French for “could do better” again?
HOW TO GET AHEAD
Britain’s permanent representative to the EU, Kim Darroch, is nothing if not a survivor. That has been clear since he managed to transform himself from Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser in Downing Street to a loyal servant of Blair’s nemesis, Gordon Brown. Darroch had by then escaped Whitehall for Brussels but his survival was far from assured as Brown’s political commissars entered No 10 taking few prisoners. Lying low for several months and then using his diplomatic skills to prove himself useful to the Brownites saw Darroch through that premiership.
By contrast, dealing with the new administration seems to have been remarkably smooth. Word has it that Jon Cunliffe, David Cameron’s current adviser on EU issues, is destined to replace Darroch as Britain’s man at the EU. But Darroch is well placed to become the successor to Peter Ricketts, the national security adviser, at some point next year.
GOOD HAIR DAYS
Finnish triathlon fanatic and former MEP Alex Stubb is one of the rare European foreign ministers who doesn’t complain about being dragged to meetings in Brussels. That’s because he also manages to squeeze into his visits a brief private appointment near the home of the European commission. Instead of heading directly to the commission’s headquarters, Stubb goes down the adjacent road to Herminio, a modest hair salon which he frequented during his ten years in Brussels as an official and MEP. Apparently no one in Helsinki has proved up to the job.
