MEPs fight for quotas in diplomatic service

MEPs threaten further delays to the launch of the European External Action Service.

The launch of the European Union’s diplomatic service is threatened with delay because MEPs are demanding greater financial control and want gender and nationality quotas for the recruitment of diplomats.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) is supposed to be launched on 1 December, but cannot start without changes to the EU’s staff and financial regulations, which have to be approved by the European Parliament. If MEPs cannot reach an agreement with the member states and Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, then the launch-date may have to be rescheduled.

Several MEPs were irritated by the announcement last week (15 September) of the first round of appointments to head the EU’s delegations abroad. They were unhappy about how few women were appointed and how few diplomats from the EU’s newer member states. They now appear determined to delay their consent to the staff and financial rules, using their leverage to weigh in on future appointments.

Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a Polish centre-right MEP and a senior figure on the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, is leading demands for nationality quotas, saying that approval of the staff regulation should be delayed. “We put the substance before the calendar,” he told European Voice.

This week the foreign affairs committee was unable to agree on the wording of a demand for gender and nationality quotas for EEAS officials, so delayed its verdict on the proposals. In turn this has delayed the final verdict from the legal affairs committee, which some MEPs accuse of not being sufficiently assertive on quotas. Bernhard Rapkay, a German centre-left MEP who is drafting the legal affairs committee’s report on the EEAS, said that he “shared the concern for geographical balance” voiced by Saryusz-Wolski, but could not support the idea of nationality quotas to help the newer member states. “Such a demand will not find a majority in the European Parliament, let alone in the Council [of Ministers],” he said, but he was more supportive of demands for gender balance.

In the Council of Ministers and the European Commission, officials suspect that Saryusz-Wolski is threatening delay in order to advance the cause of Polish candidates for senior management posts in the EEAS. Both Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Poland’s European affairs minister, and Maciej Popowski, the chief of staff to Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Parliament, are vying for senior posts in the EEAS.

Even if the quota problem is resolved, Ashton faces further problems over revision of the EU’s financial regulation, on which the Parliament’s budgets and budgetary control committees are to vote on Tuesday (28 September). Ingeborg Grässle, a German centre-right MEP who is drafting the committees’ report, wants the Commission’s internal auditor to have oversight over the administrative and operational budgets of the EEAS and is demanding that the heads of EU delegations should submit regular financial statements to MEPs. Göran Färm, a Swedish centre-left MEP, said that his Socialists and Democrats group was in broad agreement with Grässle’s demands. Grässle told European Voice that there was “a lot of opposition to Parliament’s amendments” among the member states.

The Parliament was supposed to approve the rule changes at one of their plenary meetings in October. Commission sources say that if the vote is delayed until November, which currently looks likely, then launching the EEAS on 1 December is unrealistic.

Ashton also has difficulties with some member states, which are questioning the size of the budget proposed for the EEAS.

She has been forced to rethink plans to house the service in the Capital building on avenue de Cortenbergh. The use of the Council’s Lex building, which currently houses translators, interpreters and lawyer-linguists, is now being considered.

Click Here: Cheap FIJI Rugby Jersey