The European External Action Service Roadmap For Success

The EU performs inadequately in foreign policy and its arrangements, which developed informally, have not been fit for purpose. The changes under the Lisbon Treaty will give it more effective means to formulate and implement agreed common policies, and will help to generate the necessary political will among member states.

In European External Action Service, Mauro Gatti provides a legal analysis of the EU’s ‘foreign ministry’. The European External Action Service (EEAS) was created to coordinate the supranational and intergovernmental areas of EU external relations, but it is unclear whether and how it may attain this objective. Through an analysis of law and practice, Gatti demonstrates that the EEAS is capable of effectively promoting coherence in EU external relations. Although working independently from EU institutions and Member States, the EEAS can coordinate their activities at an administrative level. The EEAS is thus ideally placed to bring together EU external action instruments, including diplomatic efforts, development cooperation, and security policies.

This book questions whether the institutions and practices of the emerging EU diplomatic system conform to established standards of the state-centric diplomatic order; or whether practice is paving the way for innovative, even revolutionary, forms of diplomatic organisation.

The creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) is one of the most significant changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon. Often referred to as the EU's 'Diplomatic Service', it is aimed at enabling greater coherence and efficiency in EU's external action. On 1 December 2010 the EEAS started its work. Over the past three years, the EEAS has been variously criticised. Considering the uncertainties about the division of labour and responsibilities, some of the criticism is justified. Albeit, it will require more than a few bureaucratic changes to make the EEAS to speak with one voice. This book attempts not only to focus on the shortcomings concerning the implementation of the EEAS but it also reflects on the added values of the service. For academics and practitioners alike, Dialer, Neisser and Opitz provide a balanced and fine-grained account of the role and functions of the EEAS and invite their readers to further discuss and research on this topic.

Based on extensive empirical work by a cross-European group of researchers, this book assesses the impact of the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) on the national foreign policy-making processes and institutions of the EU member states. As such, the contributions cover both the involvement of the national diplomatic and foreign policy actors in shaping the outlook of the EEAS and its mission, as well as the changes (or not) it has produced for those actors of the member states. The analysis draws in theoretical frameworks from Europeanization and socialization, but also from intergovernmental frameworks of policy-making within the European Union. An introduction by the editors outlines the issues and trends examined in the book and establishes the theoretical and methodological framework. Split into 2 sections, Part I: EEAS and national diplomacies as part of global and European structures has contributions by Richard Whitman, Rosa Balfour, Christian Lequesne, Caterina Carta and Simon Duke. Part II: National diplomacies shaping and being shaped by the EEAS is covered by Daniel Fiott, Fabien Terpan, Cornelius Adebahr, Andrea Frontini, Ignacio Molina and Alicia Sorroza, Laura C. Ferreira-Pereira, Alena Vysotskaya G. Vieira and Louise van Schaik, Grzegorz Gromadzki, Mark Rhinard, Jakob Lewander and Sara Norrevik, Sabina Kajnc Lange, Ruby Gropas and George Tzogopoulos, Vit Beneš and Kristi Raik. This book is much needed, especially in an era when the EU is trying to pull its weight in the international sphere (e.g. Syria, Iran, the Arab Spring, Chinese relations and emerging powers) but also at a time when the EU is trying to recalibrate its institutional structure in light of the current financial predicaments and questions on the democratic legitimacy of the European project.

European External Action Service (EEAS) is a new institution of the European Union, whose foundation was laid by the Treaty of Lisbon with the role to support the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in fulfilling his mandate and, also to assist the President of the European Council, European Commission, President and other Commissioners to exercise their powers in international relations. Since the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS) is relatively recent, this article tries to highlight the crucial role of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in the European Union's institutional system and its contribution to strengthening the coherence and increasing impact and visibility of European Union action at international level and thus the one of the Member States.

This book provides a detailed analysis of the policy-making processes of EU strategies in foreign and security policy and external action. It uses the European Security Strategy and the EU Global Strategy to assess their policy-making dynamics both before and after the Lisbon Treaty. Inter-institutional relations in strategy-making are put into the context of current debates in European integration, questioning the assumption that the EU is a body increasingly ruled by intergovernmentalism - as reflected by the new intergovernmentalism literature. The book also provides a categorisation of EU strategies and considers them as policy-inspiration documents, acting as frameworks for policy-making. This reading of strategies lies behind the analysis of the policy-making processes of the ESS and the EUGS, unpacked into four phases: agenda-setting, policy formulation, policy output and implementation. By looking at the shifting policy-making dynamics from foreign and security policy to external action, the author sheds light on the current shape of EU integration.

The creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s new diplomatic body, was accompanied by high expectations for improving the way Europe would deal with foreign policy. However, observers of its first years of operation have come to the opposite conclusion. This book explains why the EEAS, despite being hailed as a milestone in integration in Europe’s foreign policy, has fallen short of the mark. It does so by enlisting American institutionalist approaches to European questions of institutional creation, bureaucratic organisations and change. The book examines the peculiar shape the EEAS’s organisation has taken, what political factors determined that shape and design and how it has operated. Finally, it looks at the autonomous operation of the EEAS from a bureaucratic theory perspective, concluding that this is the best way to understand its course. Including data gathered from elite interviews of politicians and senior officials involved in the institutional process, an assessment of official documentary evidence and a survey of EEAS officials at the organisation’s beginning, it sheds new light on a controversial tool in the EU's foreign policy. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union foreign policy, public administration, and more broadly to European Union and European politics, as well as to practitioners within those fields.