EU AUTHORITIES have begun the process of strengthening Europe’s diplomatic presence outside the union under powers conferred in the newly enacted Lisbon Treaty.
Dozens of global diplomatic delegations that previously served the European Commission have been authorised since the start of the year to speak for the union at large.
The development comes in advance of the establishment under Lisbon of the union’s own diplomatic corps, which will be known as the EU External Action Service (EAS).
It marks the start of a gradual scaling down of the diplomatic work carried out for the union by the country that holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
A spokeswoman for Spain’s EU presidency said 57 of the commission’s global delegations were now representing the EU.
The countries in question include Afghanistan, Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Norway, Switzerland, Zimbabwe and a large number of other African states.
In these locations the commission’s delegation is deemed to be of sufficient strength to merit assuming diplomatic responsibility for the entire EU.
Each of these missions now carries out functions previously executed by diplomats from the EU presidency country, including the co-ordination of work carried out by member states’ bilateral missions.
However, bilateral missions will continue to carry out consular and trade work.
At issue in current negotiations between member states on the structure of the EAS is the formal transfer to the new service of financial responsibility for trade and humanitarian programmes currently carried out by the commission.
The creation of the EAS will ultimately lead to some duplication between national missions and the EU service.
Amid financial constraints on many member states, this could lead to pressure to close some smaller bilateral missions.
However, diplomatic sources say some consular and trade duties carried out by national missions could never be replicated by the EAS.
While Spain continues to represent the union in 61 states including the US and Russia, its responsibilities in a large number of these countries will come to an end when planned summits take place.
These include the EU-Latin America summit in May.
A handful of other EU members will continue to represent the union in countries in which Spain or the commission have no significant presence.