by Alexandra Brzozowski
Considering the many crises facing the EU, its delegations need to be alert 24 hours but are often ‘too slow’ in reporting back to Brussels, the bloc’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell said on Monday (10 October).
Speaking to EU envoys gathered for their annual meeting in Brussels, Borrell in an unusually direct way warned that reports from the EU’s diplomatic missions around the world sometimes come too late, and reactions need to be responsive to events on the ground.
“I need you to report fast, in real-time, on what is happening in your countries. I want to be informed by you. Not by the press,” Borrell said in unusually frank public comments.
“You have to be on 24 hours reaction capacity – immediately when something happens, you inform – I don’t want to continue reading things in the newspapers that happened somewhere without our delegation having said anything,” he said.
“Explain what’s happening quickly, immediately, even if you don’t have the full information in the first hours. Show that you are there,” he urged his diplomats.
Drawing a comparison with faster-paced work in national foreign ministries, Borrell told the envoys he “should be the best-informed guy in the world, having all of you around the world”.
Observers have long pointed out the problem inherited from the EU’s diplomatic service structure.
The EU’s External Action Service (EEAS), created more than ten years ago as the bloc’s foreign policy arm and now headed by Borrell, is the first diplomatic service not created by a nation-state.
“Behave as you would behave if you were an embassy – send a telegram or cable, or mail, quickly please,” Borrell added.
“We need to go faster and take risks,” he told the EU’s envoys.
About decisions taken since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Borrell said the EU’s diplomatic service should “be ready to be bold”.
“We break taboos on the war in Ukrainian, using the European Peace Facility to buy arms, something that at the beginning was claimed impossible. ‘We have never done it before’ is not a recipe. Maybe you have to start doing things that you have never done in the past. When we hesitate, we will regret it.”
In what was perceived as a veiled criticism towards the European Commission’s way of working, Borrell said the EU still tends to “operate in silos”.
“Each policy [area] continues having its own logic and its own rhythm, be it climate, be it trade, be it whatever,” he warned. “We need to be more proactive, more reactive; we have to make a link between all these problems.”
The EU diplomat’s comments come at a time of mounting criticism over the lack of communication between Brussels and its EU diplomatic missions across the globe.
Over the past few months, several EU delegation diplomats have told EURACTIV they are also frustrated with the way the home base in Brussels has been dealing with their reports, often not taking into account country expertise.
“It has become a pattern that when a regional desk has been working on an EU strategy, they have not always taken into account fully the issues we have provided,” one EU diplomat told EURACTIV.
The internal tensions come as the EU’s diplomatic service is re-exploring its scope for action on the global stage, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Seemingly addressing this disparity, Borrell said that beyond the bloc’s positive perception of its standard-setting capacity, the so-called ‘Brussels effect’, there would also be an increasing competition on whether the rest of the world would buy into the European way.
“I believe more and more the rest of the world is not ready to follow our exploitation of model (…) for cultural, historical and economic reasons – it is no longer accepted,” he said.
“We underestimate the role of emotions and the persisting appeal of identity politics,” Borrell said.
“We have to listen more; we have to be much more in listening mode to the other side, the rest of the world,” he added.
*first published in: Euractiv.com
By: N. Peter Kramer
