EUC Report: EU External Action Service

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I should explain that it was a simple mistake that my noble friend Lady Warsi was put down on today’s list of speakers instead of me. I volunteered some weeks ago to take this debate because I had just made a speech at a conference for the Foreign Office on the development of the External Action Service, had done a considerable amount of work, had had briefings from officials and had talked to people in Brussels. It seemed rather idiotic that, my having put in that effort, she should then have to do the same and duplicate that work. This happens to be one of the few subjects on which I am mildly well informed, and I find this much more comfortable than answering questions on South Sudan, North Korea or other things that one occasionally has to do. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, for his reference to the Coronation. I was indeed rehearsing in the Abbey this morning for the very small role that I will be playing in tomorrow’s service, but I shall be singing rather more deeply than I did some 60 years ago.

The Government are extremely grateful to the committee for this report, particularly for the speed at which it was completed so that it could feed in to the discussion at the informal Foreign Affairs Council in March. That helps very much to ensure that informed British views carry. We all know, and I have certainly experienced this many times in Brussels and Strasbourg, that reports from this committee are widely read and respected.

The Foreign Secretary has set out the Government’s position on the review in a recent letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, which has been shared with Parliament. In it, he welcomed the fact that the noble Baroness has set up from scratch a service that has now moved beyond the initial institutional issues to focus on a number of key foreign policy priorities. Like many of those who have spoken in this debate, the Government look forward to the EEAS continuing to focus on those areas where it can really add value by complementing and supplementing the work of member states’ diplomatic services.

Mention has been made of the valuable work on Iran. I add to what has been said in this debate that the value of the EU is sometimes that it appears to be slightly more neutral than individual states. In those parts of the world, particularly the Middle East, where there is sensitivity about the imperial past, and where echoes of the imperial past carry against Britain, France and sometimes others, the collective weight of the EU can therefore sometimes be more helpful. That is also true, to some extent, of the western Balkans.

I also noted the point made in the report about the collective weight of the European Union’s multilateral institutions. There are now some 28 states working together, with Croatia joining, plus a number of others often voting with them, which amplifies the weight of states like the UK when we all agree. The work of the E3+3, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, has been playing a collective role for the smaller states, has been very valuable in a number of ways. I note the subtle distinction between what I read in the American press about the P5+1 and in the British press about the E3+3. I am sure that the Committee understands the subtle distinctions in those descriptions of the same process.

I was quite surprised not to hear Members picking up the issue of the comprehensive approach. The issue of trying to build a much more comprehensive approach using the different levers of EU policy is part of what this has all been about. We note that the Americans, in some ways, envied the European Union in its ability to bring together aid, humanitarian intervention and a number of military instruments in the way that NATO cannot. Trying to bring together the EU-wide levers of influence, aid instruments, trade access and sanctions is very much part of what we are all attempting to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, asked me how this would help to promote policy coherence, to which one has to say that there are a number of aspects to this. The rivalry between different directorates-general in the Commission and between different Commissioners is a problem, but the extent to which domestic lobbies in different countries and their collective representatives in Brussels do their utmost to resist the policy coherence that he and I would love to have—for example, in trade policy toward north Africa and west Africa—so that trade policy does not cut across what we are trying to do in terms of development policy is something that we are stuck with as a problem of our domestic politics.

A number of noble Lords also spoke about the budgets. We have worked very hard to promote budget neutrality. We note the issue of high salaries. From anecdotal conversations that I have had, particularly with a number of people in the newer member states, I am conscious that if you come from a poorer state which is a net beneficiary of the EU budget, these issues may seem rather less important than they do to the net contributors. For those who have struggled away in national politics for some time, the thought of being appointed to an international post that will pay them far more than they are paid in their national Government has a real appeal. However, Her Majesty’s Government will continue to battle away on this front.

A number of people have also spoken about British representation in the institutions. We are very concerned to promote a high level of British representation in this new institution from the Commission, from direct recruitment and from secondees. Of course, there are problems with languages. The last time I was in Brussels I was talking with a senior official in UKREP about how we could encourage more British applicants to go through the concours to join the Commission and to gain the language skills needed. He said that by far the best way was to get them to marry someone from another country so that they will then acquire the language and, furthermore, they will agree that it is easier to live in Brussels than either of their home countries. Perhaps that is the gospel of despair. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, that we all recognise that have a great deal to do in this country on languages. The international languages, such as French, particularly for Africa, Spanish, particularly for Latin America, Arabic and Mandarin are extremely important and that requires a concentrated effort in schools as well as in universities. The noble Baroness knows as well as I do that applications to study languages at universities have been going down in recent years and that is one of the reasons why language departments in universities have been shrinking. That is all part of what we need to reverse.

A number of noble Lords also spoke about turf wars. The other day I heard from someone about the current tour of the head of the World Bank and the United Nations Secretary General to Congo. The remark by this international civil servant was that this was the first time they had managed to do something on such a good note between these traditionally deeply suspicious and uncooperative institutions. Rivalry among institutions, sadly, is a mark of international bodies. It helps that the new American head of the World Bank speaks Korean as his own language and the current Secretary General of the UN is a Korean. We have to work to reduce these turf wars.

That takes me into the question of deputies and competencies because, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, mentioned, the idea was that we would have clusters of commissioners and that the Relex group of commissioners would meet regularly. I regret, and the British Government regret, that the Relex group of commissioners has not met as regularly in the current Commission as it did in the previous Commission. Now that there are 28 commissioners, Her Majesty’s Government would very much like to move in the next Commission to a much greater dependence on clusters of commissioners, with vice-presidents, in effect, as their chair, and it seems to us entirely appropriate as part of that that one of the clusters should be an active group of external commissioners working more closely together. That would also help to reduce the element of turf wars with different commissioners and their different directorates-general promoting nuances of difference against each other. It would certainly reduce some of the weight which overloads the current high representative.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, spoke about the importance of understanding the difference between large state interests and small state interests, which is fundamental to all this. It is quite clear that for small states the EEAS is a tremendous boon. It gives them knowledge and representation in states which they had not covered before. For large states, that is less essential, although, as the squeeze on our budgets persists and as the number of member states in the UN expands beyond 190, it is not possible for all of us to be represented in all those places. Indeed, there are a number of places where the EEAS is represented where the UK is not.

Pooling and sharing is part of what we are moving towards in this area as in the common security and defence policy. We are now co-located with the Germans in Antananarivo in Madagascar as part of moving the British back into resident representation there, and also in Quito, Pyongyang and Reykjavik. I have visited the building the British and Germans have in Reykjavik on several occasions over the past 10 years. We are co-located with the French in Chisinau and Valetta, with the Dutch and the Danes in Baghdad and Beirut, with the European Union, the Germans and the Dutch for some years now in Dar-es-Salaam and with the EU, the French and the Germans in Bishkek and in Astana, a new national capital, jointly with the EU, the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Dutch and the Austrians. We are working together practically where we can and it provides greater coherence. As I have travelled around, I have experienced generally extremely favourable comments from British ambassadors about the utility of EU delegations on the spot, particularly in countries some distance from the EU, and the way in which EU embassies—often only a few EU embassies—and the resident EU delegation have learnt to work together. There is common political reporting—of course, you cannot say everything because, in a group of 28 member states, not everyone has the same attitude to confidentiality and so sometimes you cannot put everything into a joint telegram that will be circulated around all 28 members—common intelligence and common representation to the host Government.

We have some problems with the way the EEAS was set up. As the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said, and I had some sympathy with his speech, it was brought into being before its purposes had been entirely agreed. It is not the first time that has happened with an international organisation or a European institution. I am not at all sure people knew what the International Labour Organisation was going to do when it was created after the First World War. That is one of the reasons why we have some of these problems with the institutions. However, now that the EEAS is there, we have to make the best of it, and we certainly need to have as coherent a policy as we can in all of those areas where member states can agree a common policy.

Perhaps the committee will now move on to look at the question of whether we can agree a revision of the European security strategy for next December’s meeting of the European Council, which will focus on the common security and defence policy. It may be impossible to agree on a common EU security strategy again because we have not yet reached a sufficiently shared approach. That is why national Parliaments and committees meeting together for a more coherent dialogue on foreign policy and defence, and a common approach between national Parliaments, is what we need to encourage. I am glad to hear that that is developing more effectively through COSAC and other areas.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, asked about more engagement with Latin America. I am glad to be able to tell her that the new head of the European delegation in Bolivia will be a British national—who, I assume, must have absolutely fluent Spanish—on secondment to EEAS. There is a clear recognition that the EU has to be in partnership with many other South American states apart from Brazil.

I have discussed the question of language. I hope that I have answered the questions of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby about structure. We need not only the right structures but a more coherent approach. That requires active dialogue among political elites and others in various countries to agree a common approach, which is often lacking. Those in the south look naturally to north Africa, those in the east look naturally to their eastern neighbourhood, and we have different sets of priorities and assumptions.

The right reverend Prelate talked about commitment to human rights and a values-based approach to foreign policy. Her Majesty’s Government were being criticised in Brussels the other week for having what others regard as a rather transactional approach to the European Union. I look forward to hearing the Church of England collectively demanding that we have a much more positive approach to European Union co-operation because we share values with our neighbours across the continent, something that the Daily Mail is not always willing to accept. I have also answered the question on the clusters of commissioners and touched on the question of the role of national Parliaments in promoting dialogue.

I think that that enables me to say that I have answered the three points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on deputisation, turf-fighting and policy coherence. Let me therefore end by saying that the Government believe that the European External Action Service should focus on priorities agreed by member states in the Council. It should complement the member states’ diplomatic services, not replace them. Where there is no agreement among member states, we cannot expect the EEAS to bring coherence that reflects the nature of EU common foreign and security policy, but I hope that your Lordships agree that our current Foreign Secretary has been extremely active in working, above all, with our French and German partners and the other large, active diplomatic states to promote common positions where possible and, as far as we can, to carry the other, smaller member states with us in common policies toward our eastern neighbourhood, the deeply disturbed Middle East and the many weak states of Africa in which we have been active.

We look forward to the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, issuing her review of the EEAS in the summer. We very much welcome this constructive input into the debate. Her Majesty’s Government will respond to the review of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, when it is completed. I thank all those who have contributed to this debate. The committee is extremely valuable and I look forward to the many future reports it will produce under its new chairman, who was once my boss and with whom I once wrote a short book on the future of British foreign policy in the 1990s.