Martin Ehrenhauser

The financial crisis and the changes brought by the Treaty of Lisbon make the business-as-usual-administration centre Brussels sweat. For months now establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS), as foreseen by the Treaty of Lisbon, has been a top priority on the European Union’s to-do list. All in all four documents are currently being put together. The first draft of the document about launching the EEAS has already been presented by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton. On Monday its basic principles were approved by the Foreign Ministers of the EU member states. While in the matters of foreign affairs the European Parliament is normally degraded to a “coffee break chat”, it has a full co-decision power on the other three documents: i.e. staff regulation, budget and financial regulation. But Brussels would not be Brussels if the EEAS stood on solid ground, based on transparency and a clear division of competences.

In fact the EEAS is supposed to be the fusion that effectively closes the gap between the competences of the Commission and the Council. Yet a growing gap is currently emerging between decision making and implementation, the unity of which has always been an essential principle. Thus the EEAS is supposed to be in charge of planning, the European Commission in charge of implementation and the EEAS with its 130 worldwide delegations is supposed to be responsible for implementation on the ground. As a matter of fact the heads of delegation are going to spend the Commission’s money in third countries, despite the fact that the delegations are not part of the European Commission anymore. “The proposal by Baroness Ashton is a violation of budget and labour law,” said the EPP-coordinator in the Budgetary Control Committee Ingeborg Grässle.

Inspired by the increase of competences even MEPs, such as SPÖ-delegate Hannes Swoboda, who voted for the Treaty of Lisbon, proclaim loudly and with unmistakable pride that “without the decision of the Parliament” in regard to “budgetary control” the External Action Service “cannot be established”. Unfortunately they forget that the Treaty of Lisbon does not foresee any budgetary control of the EEAS by the European Parliament in terms of discharge. Only the European Commission is subject to discharge procedure. And even this procedure urgently requires a specification. Neither the goals nor the consequences of the discharge procedure are concrete. Until now no database exists that allows a quick evaluation of financial data. In reality Swoboda and Co. are calling for pseudo-audit for the External Action Service.

Even the specification of the discharge procedure would not solve the problem of efficiency. Already now the employees of the EU’s delegation are “absent 40% of their working hours”. “One cannot achieve any results if so much working time is being turned into spare time,” said Grässle.

Remark:

A proposal by the European Commission regarding the staff regulation and the budget is at present not available for the European Parliament.