By Martin Banks - 25th January 2012
We are moving in the right direction
David O'Sullivan
The top civil servant at the EU's diplomatic corps has made a robust defence of the service.
Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, David O'Sullivan said the European external action service (EAS) had worked "seamlessly" with the commission since its launch.
He also defended the "modest" budgetary increase which the service is expected to receive when current protracted negotiations over the post-2013 EU budget are concluded.
O'Sullivan, who is the EAS chief operating officer, said, "There are always resource constraints, but we are moving in the right direction."
The official also predicted "tortuous and bitter" negotiations over the next long-term EU budget, saying, "Parliament will have its own views on this, of course, but I do not expect it to increase by very much.
"At the same time it will not be possible to cut the budget by much either."
As one of the most important innovations of the Lisbon treaty, the EAS was conceived with the aim of strengthening the EU’s global performance.
The EAS was built up relatively swiftly during 2010 and has been operational since 2011.
But it had a baptism of fire, having to confront turmoil in north Africa and the Middle East, while the EU was grappling with an economic crisis at home and its institutions adjusting to the innovations of the Lisbon treaty.
O'Sullivan told a debate organised by the European Policy Centre, "One of the success stories of the past year has been the way the service has managed to work seamlessly with the commission."
Asked about 'climate diplomacy', he admitted that the international community, including the EU, had "not been as successful" as it would have liked.
He said, "The EU has been a driving force and the climate action commissioner has done a remarkable job.
"But we still have to persuade the emerging economies that they too have a stake in tackling climate change. Some get it but others see it as a challenge to their growth paths. As a diplomatic service we raise this issue at all our meetings but the challenge here is still huge."
He also said that EAS high representative Catherine Ashton had a "deep personal" commitment to defending human rights around the world.
O'Sullivan said, "Human rights is the golden thread which runs through all our work. It influences all our policies and our relations with other countries."
Citing the case of America's use of the death penalty, he said, "In some cases, though, we have to agree to disagree."
Meanwhile, an EPC policy document sayd the problems that the EEAS encountered during its first year "obscured its potential to improve the EU’s foreign and security policy."
It sayd, "The new service has huge potential to contribute to building a new strategic culture, to improve coordination among the EU institutions and member states, and to design holistic policies to respond to longstanding challenges to EU foreign policy."
The paper looks at the difference the EEAS can make in a number of cross-cutting external policy fields: crisis management and peace-building, human rights, non-proliferation, the fight against terrorism, energy and international mobility.
It argues that the EEAS "needs to prove its added value and champion the EU’s main asset: the ability to develop policies that link security with economics, internal affairs with external policies, and values and principles with interests."
