No longer quite so special

Uncertain future for EU’s special representatives as cuts and mergers of posts are considered.

The changes to the European Union’s foreign policy set-up brought about by the Treaty of Lisbon have turned the EU’s 11 special representatives (EUSRs) into an anachronism. 

Their mandates from the Council of Ministers, representing the member states, sit uneasily with the aim of a coherent, ‘joined-up’ foreign policy that the Lisbon treaty was supposed to advance.

The EUSRs were supposed to bring political capital to countries or regions that engaged the EU’s security interests while the European Commission, with its delegations, was responsible for project funding. That division of labour is fast disappearing with the establishment over the course of this year of the European External Action Service (EEAS), whose staff will include officials from the Commission and the Council as well as member states’ diplomats.

Two hats

One way of dealing with the changing environment is to ‘double-hat’ EUSRs as heads of delegation. The delegations are no longer just offices of the Commission, but of the EU as a whole.

This was the model used in the first major appointment this year by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, when she named Vygaudas Ušackas as both EUSR and head of delegation in Afghanistan. There are likely to be other EUSRs who deal with a single country rather than a region.

An alternative is to do away with some EUSRs altogether. Officials in Ashton’s office are undertaking a case-by-case review of the EUSRs to prepare a decision for later this year on which positions should be phased out and which should be transferred to the EEAS.

“It is clear that there is an ongoing need for some of them,” a senior official involved in the review said – but that also means that some of them are no longer needed.

The EUSRs for Moldova and for the South Caucasus appear to be heading for extinction. The three in the Western Balkans – for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia – might be replaced by a single, regional EUSR. Several member states are questioning the need for an EUSR dealing with the Middle East peace process, given that the EU is represented in the Quartet that steers international policy.

Fact File

THE EUSRs

? Torben Brylle – Sudan
? Pieter Feith – Kosovo
? Erwan Fouéré – Macedonia
? Valentin Inzko – Bosnia and Herzegovina
? Kálmán Mizsei – Moldova
? Pierre Morel – Central Asia, Georgia
? Marc Otte – Middle East peace process
? Peter Semneby – South Caucasus
? Vygaudas Ušackas –
Afghanistan
? Roeland van de Geer – Great Lakes region
? Koen Vervaeke – African Union

Staff changes

Before Ashton tackles the question of the EUSRs, she will need to make other staffing decisions, according to her advisers. In July, if all goes well, Ashton is to name the officials that are going to fill 32 posts of head or deputy head of EU delegations. At the end of September, she intends to fill the senior management jobs at EEAS headquarters. By November, she hopes to appoint the 22 heads or deputy heads of EU delegations whose posts are going to become vacant under the 2011 rotation of senior officials.

Ashton’s choice of which EUSRs she wants to retain will be seen by many as a signal about her policy priorities. In some places, the EUSR is perceived as the main voice of the EU on the ground, far more so than the head of delegation. Eliminating an EUSR post will be viewed as a downgrading of a country or region, although this interpretation is disputed inside the EU institutions.

Even before the Lisbon treaty took effect, some EUSRs saw their authority curtailed by political imperatives or weakened by inertia.

Peter Semneby, the EUSR for the South Caucasus, is not involved in the two main conflicts in the region: Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh is mediated not by the EU but by France, the United States and Russia; talks on Georgia’s breakaway territories are mediated not by Semneby but by Pierre Morel, a French diplomat who also serves as EUSR for Central Asia.

Marc Otte, the EUSR for the Middle East peace process, is as invisible as the process itself.

How the job description of an EUSR evolves will depend a lot on the individuals appointed. They will have to maintain a productive relationship with Ashton and national governments, while also dealing with the difficult situations that are entrusted to them. The Lisbon treaty has not changed everything: personal qualities still count.

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