Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-21-Speech-3-219"
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"Mr President, again I want to say we are not deciding whether the External Action Service will be there or not: it is already there with the Lisbon Treaty. As my colleague just said, and I too am confident, the Lisbon Treaty will be in force fairly soon.
I shall now comment on a few things that have come up in the discussion, and I think it is worthwhile taking them up. First of all, we, as the Commission, are committed to making the EEAS a success. It needs to be a shared enterprise with full buy-in of all the EU institutions and the Member States from the very start. From my own experience as Commissioner for External Relations, I think a lot of things will be done in different ways in future. I can see the need for the High Representative Vice-President to have a degree of managerial and budgetary autonomy.
At the same time, it is clear that the EEAS will need very close links with a wide range of Commission services and therefore, it is important that we work together. I support Parliament’s objectives of ensuring transparent and accountable budgetary arrangements for the EEAS. That is also clear so I think that we are looking forward to working towards the right formula on that.
Second, under the Treaty, the political accountability for the European Parliament is primarily through the President of the Commission and the High Representative Vice-President and other Members of the Commission. We welcome the clear signal in Mr Brok’s report that the High Representative Vice-President should be the appointing authority for the EEAS and the senior delegation staff.
In the new system, heads of delegation and other senior EEAS staff will be EU officials under the Staff Regulations, subject to defined appointment procedures and obligations of independence. We would have questions about the implications of singling out one group for EP hearings in this way. Even if it were a question of hearings only for a more political post, the same consideration would apply. I think this is certainly not in line with the practice in Member States.
Again, we understand, however, that Parliament has an interest in having an in-depth exchange, be it formal or be it informal, with key senior officials in the EEAS and the delegations. I think this could be done after somebody has been appointed; then they should go to Parliament and discuss things with Parliament.
I have also noted with great interest and pleasure that the question of human rights and the question of women’s rights have been mentioned. I can only tell you that all the EU institutions are committed to gender mainstreaming. This will also apply in the EEAS, but appointments also have to be on merit, so merit and gender mainstreaming have to go together.
I wanted to quickly comment on the Israeli Government and my trip to the Middle East. After the Gaza conflict, it was very important to obtain a ceasefire. I tried to contribute to the first ceasefire and I think it was my intervention in particular that made it possible to open humanitarian corridors and set times to deliver humanitarian goods at that very difficult and decisive moment.
Finally, on the matter of delegations, as I said before: they are open already. The European parliamentary delegations that you mentioned are already open for Commissioners or for Council members to go there, but it also depends on the time schedule. The situation should be the same in the future."@en1
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