EU FOREIGN policy chief Catherine Ashton is engaged in last-minute haggling with the European Parliament over the structure of her diplomatic service as MEPs hold out for gender and nationality quotas in the new body.
Although preparations are well advanced for the establishment of the European External Action Service on December 1st, a leading Polish MEP is leading a push for quotas as important committees of the parliament prepare to vote on the staff regulations for the new organisation.
Ms Ashton faces further problems in the form of demands by another group of MEPs to give new powers to the European Commission’s internal audit unit to oversee the service.
The demands for quotas come a week after Ms Ashton made her first ambassadorial appointments to the service, a selection that annoyed many of the 2004 accession states as they believed older and more powerful member states were disproportionately represented.
MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, former chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the parliament and head of the polish delegation in the centre-right European Peoples’ Party group, has argued that approval of the staff regulation should be delayed until nationality quotas are agreed.
Ms Ashton disagrees. A vote in the committee was suspended last week until next Wednesday. Only when this committee votes can the matter go to the judicial committee of the parliament, whose approval is required before the entire parliament votes on the measure.
If the service is to be up and running in December, sources say such approval will have to be granted at the plenary session next month. While some observers believe MEPs might block a plenary vote if they do not get their way, Ms Ashton is confident. “We believe that we have a very strong case. The obligations from the [Lisbon] Treaty need to be fulfilled and we are engaging with the parliament,” said a spokeswoman.
Ms Ashton wrote to Mr Saryusz-Wolski, and argued against quotas: “Excluding certain gender or nationality groups . . . by means of a quota system would undermine the communitaire nature of the EEAS, indirectly undermine the credibility of successful applicants from the groups covered by the quota and could exclude the best applicants for the jobs.”