EUC Report: EU External Action Service

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson]

Moved by

That the Grand Committee takes note of the report of the European Union Committee on the EU’s External Action Service.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, since I have been chair of the External Affairs Committee and its predecessors, we have been concerned that the committee should look at things that are practical and where we can make a difference. I, and I am sure my fellow committee members, like to think that we made a difference in our report on Afghanistan EUPOL and on Somali piracy, and perhaps even in our larger report about relations between the EU and China. We took on as our most recent subject the European External Action Service, which is coming up to its two-year review later this year—I think it is expected to take off in July, the month after next—because we wanted to ensure as a House, as one of the key institutions that looks at European affairs in the United Kingdom, let alone as part of this Parliament, that we could put our opinions into that process. That is why we foreshortened our report and issued it relatively quickly to the Government: so that it could be part of those discussions. Having said that, it is probably one of our more politically charged reports and one in which there was a greater diversity of opinion within the sub-committee. That, I am sure—and I welcome it—will come out in the debate this afternoon.

The External Action Service is quite a difficult area for discussion. It is only two years old. Sources vary over the question of when it was started; some say it was December 2010 and others January 2011. In many ways it was invented out of the Kissinger question, “Who do I phone for Europe?”. The whole debate about a unified voice for Europe is one reason why it was in the Lisbon treaty, but by that time it was not the European Foreign Ministry that it was perhaps originally meant to be; rather, it became the high representative and an institution to support her in her work. I will come back to that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, who was appointed to the EAS, is well respected and liked within the House but was hardly known throughout Europe and therefore had a very low-profile start. Being British, or at least being a British commissioner because she has that hat as well, has perhaps made her position even more nuanced and difficult in certain areas. At its start, the EAS was trying to give Europe its true voice all around, in Europe and in the much broader world. Then the eurozone crisis came along and, however good and unified we wanted to make Europe sound, the real noise at the forefront was around Europe’s failures in many ways to make decisions about its own currency and economy. Then there is the vagueness of the task. Nothing in the Lisbon treaty really says what the External Action Service should do except be of assistance to the high representative, and even there the job description is somewhat vague.

How do we describe the External Action Service? It is not an official institution; it is not really a part of the Council, certainly not part of the Commission and absolutely not part of the European Parliament. Then we come to the question of whether Europe really has a foreign policy worth the name. My own view is—and the work that we did on looking at that demonstrates—that it very much does. The European Union makes pronouncements on foreign policy that are often joined by 11 other nation states around Europe that combine with the European member states to make policy decisions. We have to agree, though, that on occasions, and in some of the most important areas such as the Middle East perhaps, Europe does not agree at all.

To all this we have to add a number of other areas. There is the question of large versus small state; not only Germany but France and the United Kingdom stride the globe with our hundreds of years of diplomatic experience, and we are very jealous of that, particularly in France and the UK. Yet we also have small member states that have perhaps only 40 embassies abroad at all, many of those within the European Union. It is questionable whether they even have a foreign policy at all.

To all this we add the fact that the EAS was being set up while it was being run; that there were three cultures among the staff who came from the Commission, from the Council and from national diplomatic corps, which inevitably caused turf wars, let alone culture wars; and that the high representative’s job is often seen as being impossible as they wear three hats: the hat of the high representative, the hat of the vice-president of the Commission and the hat of the chair of the Foreign Affairs Council.

We come down to the fundamental question which this report does not really answer. At some point someone might have to make up their mind about this. Is the External Action Service supposed to be a world-class foreign office and diplomatic corps of a supranational quasi-state called Europe, or is it there just to add diplomatic value to the traditional Commission tasks of trade and development? I leave Members to make their own choice, but in the longer term that is what will drive not this review but reviews in the future.

I shall give the Committee one or two facts. The EAS budget is €500 million—nothing to be sniffed at, but that is only 0.4%, or in effect one-third of 1%, of the European Union’s budget. The EAS has 141 delegations abroad; it started with 136 but has combined some and opened others in places such as South Sudan, which I am sure we would agree with in that instance. It has about 3,400 staff altogether.

This organisation is significant and important, but what are the headlines in relation to what should happen in this review? I shall go through them very quickly because other noble Lords will go through them in detail in their speeches. Budget neutrality was supposed to be achieved, and in times of economic difficulty in Europe we believe that that should be maintained. The only way that can be done is by prioritising, but that is very difficult with such a large agenda. It should concern the emerging powers such as China, India and perhaps Brazil, and it should concern our local neighbourhood in the east and the south. A lot of the EAS’s time has been taken up by the Arab spring and neighbourhood questions. It should also perhaps be a priority in crisis management. We have seen examples of that in Somalia, the Horn of Africa and Mali.

The turf war between the Commission’s and the External Action Service’s core staff, the diplomatic staff, must end. We believe that that situation is much better, but it has to improve and be resolved in the near future. We need to think anew. We should not be bound by the geographical locations of existing missions. We have to think about the future rather than the inheritance of the past. We believe that as foreign policy is primarily intergovernmental, the EAS’s annual report should be presented to each of the national parliaments. Clearly, that has to be done in a sensible way so that we can formally respond to the External Action Service’s work each year and feed back into it as an intergovernmental area of EU policy.

Over the next few years, it is fundamental that the EAS concentrates on adding diplomatic value to the strong work undertaken in trade and development. At the end of the day, one of the key issues that we in Britain have to look at is the large versus small state issue. Three ambassadors of smaller member states—Lithuania, Slovenia and Slovakia—were witnesses, and in those states there was a completely different view from perhaps that of French parliamentarians about the role of the EAS. The small member states—this was confirmed to me when I was in Estonia last week—see the EAS as part of the European deal, part of their membership, part of what they are, and they expect it to respond to their needs. They do not have the resources for a worldwide presence, and they see the External Action Service as a way of having that. In a Europe where the United Kingdom, and perhaps France these days, has to look for strong allies among all states, I say to our Government that this is one area where they have to take care in their views about the External Action Service in the future. It is easier for us with larger budgets and a larger presence to see the EAS as something that perhaps threatens certain national representation abroad, but to smaller member states it is a way forward and a way to a global and much more visible presence abroad. We need to find a way to drive both of those agendas forward. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I am not sure that that declaration of interest should not have been made at the beginning of the speech, rather than at the end. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I thank my noble friend Lord Wallace for stepping in. Goodness knows what would happen if the Government always put forward the person who knew about the subject rather than the one they would put in otherwise. That might really do something to change the way we work.

I am going to comment on only one statement, which was made by my noble friend Lord Lamont, whose contribution to this report was truly excellent. He mentioned that he had spoken to our ambassadors about the EAS and that they had been somewhat disparaging about it. Funnily enough, I do the same and get exactly the opposite reaction, which shows how good our diplomats are at giving us the message that they know we want to receive. The EAS should perhaps learn from that example.

I am not going to say anything more about the report. It has all been said. However, I do want to say to members of the committee who are here, and past members, that I found it a great honour and privilege to be chair of the committee over four Sessions. Thanks to everybody’s contribution, it has been the best job you could ever have in this House, with no disrespect to anybody else or any other office. I particularly want to thank the clerk of the committee who served the whole of that time, Kathryn Colvin, who was excellent in the innovations in her report writing and in the way she supported the committee. I also want to thank Roshani Palamakumbura; her predecessor, Oliver Fox; Ed Bolton of the secretariat; and his predecessor, Bina Sudra. My noble friend Lord Tugendhat, who I am delighted has now taken over the chairmanship of the sub-committee, has great topics to look forward to and a great committee to lead and chair. It has been a great privilege for me.

Motion agreed.