A Hybrid Service: Organising Efficient EU Foreign Policy

Abstract

There is no blueprint for the creation of a new ‘institution’¹ in Brussels. The setting up of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in January 2011 was the culmination of a ten-year political process. It followed a number of false starts and was based, from an organisational viewpoint, on little or no prior preparation owing to the tight timeline between the adoption of the legal decision setting up the service in July 2010 and its entry into force less than five months later. Moreover, the EEAS was not just another Brussels body: to reach a political compromise acceptable to Council, Commission, and Parliament, a new organisational model had been agreed, merging Commission and Council Secretariat departments and embedding the ‘three hats’ of the High Representative/Vice-President (HR/VP) of the Commission (and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Council) in the personnel structure of the service. As a result, the EEAS is the first EU institution, and the first international administration, to include on an equal footing personnel from three sources: permanent officials of European institutions (Commission and Council Secretariat), and national diplomats and military personnel seconded from national armed forces. In short, from an organisational standpoint, the EEAS represents a new model with a ‘hybrid’ engine (Bátora, 2013).