Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-21-Speech-3-170"
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"en.20091021.9.3-170"2
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"Mr President, we are, I hope, on the very last lap of the process of bringing the Treaty of Lisbon into force, completing a process which has taken eight years of discussions and negotiations. After the decisive result of the Irish referendum, we all hope that the Czech ratification can finally follow very soon. If we achieve this on the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Europe, it will be a great day for Europe and its citizens – not least because we will be able to focus all our attention on the pressing challenges and policy concerns that lie ahead of us.
As for the scope of the service, it needs to have a comprehensive overview of the Union’s relations with the rest of the world, so it needs geographical desks as well as horizontal services to cover questions such as CFSP and CSDP, human rights and relations with UN bodies. The aim is to prevent duplication and to ensure that all those responsible for delivering EU external policy work effectively together, and the Commission will also continue to have services responsible for trade, development policy, aid implementation, humanitarian aid and enlargement. It will also, of course, continue to drive the external aspects of the Union’s key internal policies, and a central question in the current debate is how to manage the programming of external assistance.
I can assure Parliament that the EU’s development policy, including poverty eradication, will be a central part of the Commission’s external activities. The High Representative Vice-President and the Commissioner for Development will work extremely closely together on this. The fact that the new High Representative will also be a Vice-President of the Commission, responsible for coordinating all of the EU’s external action, will help. The service will also be responsible for the administration of delegations, though the people inside delegations will come, as now, from different services – not just the EEAS, but also the Commission services and maybe other institutions and bodies of the European Union.
From the entry into force of the Treaty, Commission delegations will become EU delegations. This will give them new responsibilities, but it will not diminish their role in representing the full range of Commission activities. The EU delegations should be responsible for representation, coordination and negotiation as from the day the Treaty comes into force. In most places, this procedure will go quite smoothly. However, in some, where the workload is particularly heavy, it will be necessary to organise a form of burden-sharing, not only with the rotating Presidency but also with other Member States.
The creation of an entirely new external service is a major undertaking. It will, as your report says, evolve over time. We will learn together. Our first aim must be that during the period between the entry into force of the Treaty and the coming into being of the EEAS, the effective delivery of the EU’s external policies is maintained. We and the Council Secretariat will work together with the High Representative Vice-President to ensure that there is no gap. But we need to look further. We will be bringing together officials and diplomats from the different institutions and all the Member States. As we know, a common foreign policy is not just the sum of 27 national policies. We need people within the EEAS who, while not losing their distinctive national ties, think European. We therefore need to create an EU diplomatic culture and an EU
. For this, training is essential.
The report raises the promising idea of the creation of a European diplomatic academy. In the meantime, we can make good use of the Member States’ diplomatic academies. I very recently attended the 10th anniversary of the European diplomatic programme, which has anticipated and shown the way. It is worth remarking that since the 1970s, the Commission has already organised training seminars for more than 5 700 diplomats. One of the tasks of the EEAS will be to establish a training strategy to ensure that all members, whatever their background, will be equipped to carry out their tasks. Heads of delegations, in particular, will have to be able not only to carry out their political role, but also to handle all the Commission activities that are such a substantial part of a delegation’s mandate.
Mr Brok’s report also raises the question of whether consular services might be covered by the EEAS. The Commission is open to this idea even if it may take some time to develop. These are matters for the future. For the present, it is a challenge for us to ensure that the EEAS functions well and in the interests of all: the European citizens, the Member States and the European Union. The Commission supports the creation of the EEAS, wants it to succeed, and will contribute in every way possible to ensure that it does so. This report shows that Parliament will do the same.
I am sorry to have been a little long, but I think this is such an important matter. Please forgive me, Mr President.
As we reach the final stages, allow me to congratulate Parliament, and particularly the Constitutional Affairs Committee, with Elmar Brok as rapporteur, on delivering its opinion on the key element of the Lisbon Treaty which is the External European Action Service. The creation of the EEAS offers the European Union and all its component institutions the chance to achieve what we have long hoped for: to have a common voice in the world and to strengthen the EU’s influence in the world.
Mr Brok’s report recognises this great potential. Together with this important debate and many other consultations with Parliament representatives, it provides vital input to our work with the Swedish Presidency, but also with the Member States and the Council Secretariat, over the coming months. I am happy to confirm that the Commission strongly supports Parliament’s overall approach. I agree with the principles of transparency, democracy and coherence that you have just mentioned. It is obviously important that all the institutions work together to help the newly-appointed High Representative Vice-President in his or her task of preparing the decision on the creation of an EEAS – a decision which, as you know, requires the consent of the Commission and the consultation of Parliament.
Firstly, let me mention the status of the EEAS. Indeed it will be
as there is no model to follow. We are building something new. It will neither be intergovernmental nor purely based on the Community method, but we must ensure that the new system has a genuinely European approach inspired by and grounded in the strengths of Community policies, as again was mentioned. The key question for us all is what the EEAS should be able to deliver. This should be our objective. By bringing together the various actors in the field of external relations, we can ensure that our relations with the outside world are clear, coherent and driven by a single set of policy goals. It must carry authority as the core of EU external policy, the place where policy is developed and coordinated. It must also be seen to be such, both from inside and from outside the European Union, and the EEAS will only be effective if it works well with other institutions and fully respects the interinstitutional balance.
This is why I think it is very important that the EEAS should be set up in a way which allows it to work very closely with the Commission and the Council and to respect the need to be fully accountable to the European Parliament. For the Parliament, the bringing together of external action responsibilities into a single service will, I believe, mean a step change in Parliament’s capacity to fulfil its role of scrutinising Union policy. Like the service itself, the way in which Parliament relates to the service and to the High Representative Vice-President will also, in a way, have to be
.
The creation of the EEAS will require a variety of decisions, probably including changes to the Financial Regulation and the Staff Regulations, both of which require a Commission proposal and adoption through codecision.
The High Representative Vice-President needs the authority to manage the service, but the service also needs to serve the EU system as a whole – most obviously, the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council, as well as the other Commissioners with a role in external relations. It must be able to offer its assistance, both in Brussels and in third countries, to the European Parliament and to its official delegations which travel abroad.
The close involvement of the Member States in the new service is one of its key innovations. The COREPER ambassadors are looking at how best to ensure that high-quality Member States’ diplomats can be brought into the service early. We in the Commission are examining how this may be done pending the modification of the Staff Regulations, and appointment to the service should be through selection procedures based on merit, with appropriate account being taken of the need for a geographic and gender balance. This very much meets the wishes expressed in the report.
We also believe that all members of the EEAS, whether officials of the EU institutions or Member States’ officials on temporary contracts, should enjoy the same rights. They will be equal in every sense."@en1
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