This week Cathy Ashton clashed again with the European Parliament and it seems the Parliament gets a few concessions regarding the important budgetary oversight -  and the not so important details about EP visits to delegation…  However, in the committee earlier this week it seemed to me that most MEPs were more concerned with posts,  geographical balance,  and gender quotas. Don’t get me wrong, this is important but it might not be the most important issue for the EEAS at the moment.

But I think we should not get carried away by the EEAS. Basically the EEAS is a institutional cleaning exercise.  The (IMHO:  modest) idea is to streamline decision making procedures and put all existing EU foreign policy tools in one institutional framework with one line of command. In other words institutional streamlining. That is the theory but as we see this in itself is rather difficult.

Some people that are close to Ashton don’t seem to trust her and are happy to use a French journalist to publish stories that aim at discrediting her. At the same time turf wars broke out between the European Commission, the Council, the Parliament and the member states about almost all EEAS aspects. But in a way this is a normal reflex  when a  new institutional framework is created.

And then there is the row about languages: German Foreign Minister Westerwelle wants to make sure that German is an official language. The French Foreign Minister “Secretary of State for European Affairs” (Thanks Andre!) Lallouche  wants  Cathy Asthon to learn better French.  Everyone wants to have a say about the EEAS. People seem to be attracted by diplomatic passports. But nobody thinks about policy innovation and how to actually develop a EU foreign policy. And Cathy Ashton is right: “If we pull together we can safeguard our interests. If not, others will make the decisions for us. It’s that simple.” And please note that she said “safeguard” and not “impose”..

At the moment it seems that the EEAS only exists that national diplomats get another career option. It strikes me why there need to be national diplomats in the EEAS if member states did not give up anything. They keep their embassies and foreign ministries and do not delegate any new responsibility to the EEAS.  But this seemed to be the price for the double hatted High Rep. and a bit of institutional streamlining… After all,  the Lisbon treaty is quite a modest reform treaty and in many ways the lowest common denominator.

So, CSDP decisions still require unanimity in the Council.  And there don’t seem to be any plans to communitarise anything in the future! (EEAS to deal with Schengen Visas would have been an option, also consular services in general) We will see a rebranding of existing EC delegations. Incremental changes might lead to some good outcomes. Generally, implementation might indeed improve -  but the decisions about the priorities will not improve at all. Some cooperation practices in international organisations might be improved and some funding lines might work better.  So far the EEAS debate has not focused on any innovative new policies. Everyone seems to hope that once it is in place everything will go a bit more smoothly and coherently. But there is hardly any dramatic change for EU foreign policy on the horizon.

So what could be done to give a innovative boost to the EEAS? Maybe some member states should consider closing some embassies!? Governmental spending is huge and national budget deficits are rising. Wouldn’t that be a good justification to close a few expensive embassies that mainly serve representative functions? Here is the deal: If you close an embassy – one of your diplomats will become head of a EEAS embassy!

Three waves | Roll into port together | The trio is home. (Herman Van Rompuy)

What does this mean in practice, what are the advantages of the Trio and its relations with the newly established players? It might be too early to judge, but we can already get some insight from the experience of the Spanish-Belgian- Hungarian Trio. Its work has been reflected on at the launch of a report on the contribution of 14 European think-tanks to the Spanish, Belgian and Hungarian Trio Presidency of the European Union.

While, in the pre-Lisbon setting, the past, current and forthcoming Presidencies were encouraged to work together in order to ensure coherence and continuity, the fact that now this collaboration is made official (and compulsory), gives it a boost, by creating common practices. The civil servants from the three countries meet regularly, in sectoral structures and at various levels, to discuss the priorities for the 18 months. This starts about two years before the first Presidency takes office and ends after the third has finished its mandate, not before making a thorough evaluation of the Trio’ s performance. All this may sound like  a normal bureaucratic procedure, a pure coordination task. Yet, it is more than that. It is an exercise that helps civil servants  and politicians with different (sometimes very different) administrative and political cultures to get to know and understand each other and start thinking out of the “national” box. Thus, in order to draft a common programme, the three countries try to take on board each other’s interests, apart from their own national one, leading to a set of priorities that each of them can feel the ownership of. Moreover, these priorities that have been agreed by three Member States have a bigger weight when it comes to defining each country’s own strategic lines for he 6 months period.

The protagonists of the first official trio, Spain, Belgium and Hungary, seem to have found this exercise very useful. At the symbolic level, they decided to use the same logo design, with only the colours of the national flags changing. A common website was also created (www.eutrio.eu); however, contrary to expectations, this web address is currently used just as an alias for the Spanish Presidency website (which, in its turn, does not have a lot of references to the Trio and not in the most visible of places). At the more practical level, the Trio has drafted a single programme, instead of three different programmes as it used to be the case; however, it seems that each country still follows its own set of priorities, de facto reducing the common programme to a strategic framework, while still allowing specific Member States to take credit for certain achievements that happened to take place in their 6 months term. (Update: the Spanish Presidency is already “taking stock” of the achievements of the first third of its term, coming up with a very positive assessment. No reference to the common Trio programme and the progress in terms of that, in case you were wondering).

During the preparatory stage, the Trio had some daring ideas, such as having one country chairing one working group or/and Council formation for 18 months, while the other two countries chair others, or to have interchangeable chairs from the three countries. These arrangements would have reinforced the idea of a common programme and a common identity; but they proved to be too forward-thinking for this moment, adding up to the current post-Lisbon institutional confusion. Perhaps this is still something to think about for the next Trio (Poland, Denmark and Cyprus).

It still remains to be seen what role the rotating Presidency will carve for itself in the new interinstitutional power balance. Even though most of the visibility is taken up by Herman Van Rompuy, one has to remember that it is still the rotating Presidency that chairs the 270 Council Working Groups, the COREPER meetings, as well as nine out of ten Council formations, including the General Affairs Council (GAC), whose horizontal coordination role can prove to be very important strategically. Another key issue is how the Trio Presidencies will relate to the newly established institution- the European Council- and its growing powers, especially in the economic area. While the usual working practices of the Council are of a bottom-up nature (starting at Working Group level, then going to COREPER and only then- and only the controversial, unsolved issues- going to the level of Ministers), the increased role of the European Council might see these practices change, allowing for the possibility of a top-down approach in certain areas.

Irrespective of the way the Trio will interpret and fulfill its tasks, it is important to remember, when looking at the institutional structure of post-Lisbon EU, that the rotating Presidency is still playing an important role. Practice will show, in the following months, if the idea of an official Trio has given it more strength, coherence and continuity. And all this beyond a common logo and a programmatic set of common priorities.

Anyway, the video is a nice reminder what the POTEC  (that sounds quite cool – is there also an official short form?) actually does – arguably not that much. So no need to get overexicted by this new position. A video that should definitely be watched by journalists and governmental website editors:

I am pretty sure that the  pressure on Klaus will be enormous. There are already rumors that Angela Merkel is preparing a “diplomatic sweetener” for him, whatever that means… Taking into account that the Czech Parliament ratified the treaty and the Czech president does not have any powers to veto the treaty,  it is his constitutional obligation to sign it eventually (apparently the problem is that the Czech constitution does not specify how long the President is allowed to postpone his  signature). Obviously he will use the argument that he needs to wait until the constitutional court has issued the ruling on a complaint of some senators. But in the end I am pretty sure that he will sign and that he will not have the guts to wait until the Conservatives form a government in the UK (which might happen next summer)…

However, the wider context is noteworthy: After a almost a decade of debate (Laeken 2001, Convention, Constitutional treaty, …) it seems that we end up with this mini reform treaty. I think most of the other major EU treaties contained more far-reaching reforms than this one. Basically only a couple of things are really innovative:  new double majority voting in more policy areas, a strengthened role for the European Parliament, some clarifications regarding competences, and some improvements in the field of EU foreign policy.

One thing is quite clear, there won’t be another big EU treaty for the foreseeable future  given the difficulty to get such a text ratified by 27 member states. A positive side effect might be that we can finally concentrate on policy issues and leave this institutional debate behind us – at least for a couple of years.  However, the Lisbon Treaty is far from being perfect and it is quite possible that it will create a number of institutional problems. The future will bring new challenges and new reforms might be necessary. And let’s face it: every reform needs to be reformed. So how is it possible to address these challenges and ensure further EU reform, even with 30+ member states (and with people like David Cameron)?

One possibility is to move towards thematic treaties. For example a “issue treaty” on climate change, or one on foreign policy or on police cooperation. These treaties would address one specific issue only – which seems much easier to communicate. These treaties would contain a list of competences for EU institutions as well as national institutions. Moreover, such an issue treaty would address the decision making in this specific policy area and  maybe even include  specific policy aims (reducing emission by 30%, creating a new agency or a new position, banning a certain chemical substance,  introducing a certain measure…whatever). One thing must be included however: if a country rejects one of those treaties, everyone must be clear about the consequences. Basically, a rejection would result in an opt out (similar to Schengen, Euro) but with the possibility to join later.  Of course the result would be an even more complex EU. But maybe this is the price to pay for a bigger and more diverse EU…

The text will be discussed during the  June summit of the European Council this week in Brussels.

Sorry, no time for further comments. Probably a law degree would be helpful to analyse it properly…

Update: Read more over at The European Citizen blog!

Update: The final text as part of the European Council Presidency Conclusions (pdf)