The proposal to create the European External Action Service (EEAS) seemed to be an acceptance by the European Union’s political elites that, in the post-Westphalian world, more attention needed to be given to collective European diplomacy rather than individual national diplomacy. Yet there was no guarantee that existing officials, whether from EU institutions or from the EU member states, would easily accept the related diplomatic norms and values. Melding different epistemic communities into one effective new diplomatic community is not a foregone conclusion. Europe’s new diplomatic service ‘an sich’ is not a diplomatic service ‘für sich’. While creating a team with a spirit of unity was the formal goal, ambiguities in the Lisbon Treaty’s articles on the EEAS have facilitated a major reassertion of bureaucratic politics, which are destined to keep Westphalian diplomacy alive and to produce even more turf battles and complexity. The mind-sets of the component parts of the EEAS are so diverse that, without serious discussion of these issues and concentrated training, creating a new European diplomacy will be difficult.
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J.C. Piris, The Lisbon Treaty: A Legal and Political Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 273-287.
M. Westlake and D. Galloway, The Council of Ministers (London: John Harper, 2004), p. 335.
M. Westlake, ‘Why Presidencies Still Matter’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft (ÖZP), 36 Jg. (2007) H. 2, pp. 157-165. Lest it be misunderstood, the six-monthly rotating Presidency continues to exist in Brussels meetings for all but CFSP-related issues, but in the delegations abroad, Presidency functions related to non-CFSP issues are also managed by the EU delegations.
(Lord) J. Kerr, ‘Pick the Best European Cherries’, Financial Times, 27 February 2007.
J. Solana, ‘Follow My Leaders’, Financial Times, 12 July 2003.
D. Spence, ‘Taking Stock: 50 Years of European Diplomacy’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, vol. 4, no. 2, 2009. For a strongly argued, but narrower, interpretation, see Mai’a Keapuolani and David Cross, ‘A European Epistemic Community of Diplomats’, in P. Sharp and G. Wiseman (eds), The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007). Research might apply the tools of G. Allison’s Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston MA: Little Brown, 1971).
Haas (ed.), Knowledge, Power and International Policy Coordination, p. 3.
M. Emerson and J. Wouters, ‘The EU’s Diplomatic Debacle at the UN: What Else and What Next?’ CEPS Commentary, 1 October 2010.
S.E. Page, The Difference (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 314.
L. Pirandello, ‘Pirandello Confesses’, Virginia Quarterly Review, no. 1, April 1925.
European Commission, ‘Report on the Longer-Term Needs of the External Service’ (known as the ‘Williamson Report’), 1996.
W. Nicoll, ‘Note the Hour and File the Minute’, Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), vol. 31, no. 4, December 1993.
C. Meyer, Getting Our Way (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2009), p. 262.
E-mail to the author, 5 August 2011.
E. Suleiman, Elites in French Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).
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The proposal to create the European External Action Service (EEAS) seemed to be an acceptance by the European Union’s political elites that, in the post-Westphalian world, more attention needed to be given to collective European diplomacy rather than individual national diplomacy. Yet there was no guarantee that existing officials, whether from EU institutions or from the EU member states, would easily accept the related diplomatic norms and values. Melding different epistemic communities into one effective new diplomatic community is not a foregone conclusion. Europe’s new diplomatic service ‘an sich’ is not a diplomatic service ‘für sich’. While creating a team with a spirit of unity was the formal goal, ambiguities in the Lisbon Treaty’s articles on the EEAS have facilitated a major reassertion of bureaucratic politics, which are destined to keep Westphalian diplomacy alive and to produce even more turf battles and complexity. The mind-sets of the component parts of the EEAS are so diverse that, without serious discussion of these issues and concentrated training, creating a new European diplomacy will be difficult.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1458 | 200 | 4 |
Full Text Views | 373 | 11 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 395 | 29 | 0 |