15 September 2010
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Baroness Catherine Ashton
Europe's power nations won the lion's share of new EU ambassadorial postings Wednesday in the 27-nation bloc's new diplomatic corps.
"I have appointed the best people for the right jobs," said Europe's foreign policy supremo Catherine Ashton as she issued the maiden batch of foreign appointments in the new corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS).
Ashton was named last December to helm the EEAS, aimed at helping Europe speak with one voice and strengthen its impact on the world scene. But the making of the EEAS, still a work in progress, has prompted widespread grumblings, with critics complaining of appointments being stitched up to favour the union's older Western members, and few East Europeans -- let alone women -- in line for the top jobs.
"We are deeply disappointed," Slovenian Foreign Minister Samuel Zbogar said in a first reaction. "We expected more transparent decisions and that geographic balance would be taken into account, in particular for those states, like Slovenia, which have no presence at all in the EU's foreign institutions," Zbogar told journalists.
As Ashton announced 29 much-awaited nominations, Germany and Austria nabbed the prized EU ambassadorial postings of Beijing and Tokyo, after Washington went to Portugal's Joao Vale de Almeida last month. Markus Ederer, a top foreign ministry official in Berlin, is to take up the Beijing post, while Austria's current ambassador to the European Union, Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, will go to Japan, Ashton said.
Among other new ambassadors named are five Spaniards, three French and three Irish. Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands also snapped up postings. Of the newer member states, Poland won South Korea and Jordan, Bulgaria was handed Georgia, and a Lithuanian diplomat named to Afghanistan.
"We have made a start to address the important issues of geographical and gender balance," said Ashton. "These appointments show an improvement in both but there is more to do."
Further down the road, the English baroness is to release the names of her powerful inner circle staff, a list said to be already carved in stone that is tipped to bias big member states Britain, France and Germany. Ashton's pledge to redress the gender imbalance too looks a long road away, with only six women among the batch of new EU ambassadors.
The EEAS, said Green member of the European Parliament Franziska Brantner, threatens to become "a gentlemen's cigar-smoking club". Diplomatic sources expect the EEAS board chaired by Ashton to include France's current ambassador to the United Nations, Pierre Vimont, as her number two. To offset his influence, she wants her friend and ally, Ireland's David O'Sullivan, as chief operating officer. He is currently the European Commission's director-general for trade.
Tipped as deputies to Vimont are top German official, Helga Schmidt, and an official from Poland. At a foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels last weekend, backroom talk was all about the carve-up of posts in the new diplomatic service, ultimately comprising thousands of diplomats and bureaucrats.
"It's unacceptable that new members who've been members of this family for some years only have so few, one or two representatives among over a 100 representation offices," said Poland's Radoslaw Sikorski, whose country joined the bloc along with nine other mostly ex-communist nations in 2004. "Appointments should be made on merit," he added. "We in the new member countries have people who speak the languages of the former Soviet Union, we have expertise there. I just hope that speaking languages is going to be more important than other esoteric considerations."
The European Parliament must yet give its approval, in October or November, to the EEAS budget and a staff salary grid. Ashton's diplomatic corps is therefore unlikely to kick off work before December 1, a year after she was appointed High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, a position created by the Lisbon Treaty.
Source: Breitbart.
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