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🇵🇾 Paraguay /Elections & Politics

Kallas cancels expert group on speeding up EU foreign policy after lack of support

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources New plan
  • Kaja Kallas canceled the planned presentation of a high-level group intended to help the European Union act faster on foreign and defense policy.
  • Her spokesman said some member states believed the initiative was not the right approach at this time, and Kallas is seeking other ways to work with them.
  • Kallas maintains that Europe must move faster on defense, while most member states support the current institutional structure of the EU diplomatic service.

Kaja Kallas has canceled the planned launch of a group of former European political and military leaders after several member states questioned whether it was the right approach at this moment.

Some member states considered that it was not the right path to follow at this time.

· Christian WigandExplanation for canceling the planned presentation of Kallas’s expert group.

The EU’s foreign policy chief had planned to present the group on Monday. Commission spokesman Christian Wigand said Kallas made the decision after discussions with ministers and was now looking for new ways to cooperate with member states.

“The diagnosis has not changed, and Europe must act more quickly on defense,” Wigand said. Kallas had announced the group the previous Tuesday during an informal meeting of EU defense ministers in Newtownmountkennedy, Ireland. The proposed group was also to include representatives from the United Kingdom and Ukraine and examine defense challenges from a “new perspective.”

The diagnosis has not changed, and Europe must act more quickly on defense.

· Christian WigandStatement on the continuing need for faster European defense action.

Kallas said former political and military leaders could voice ideas that EU institutions might not be able to express. She urged them to challenge conventional thinking and consider what Europe should do differently to defend itself better, faster and more intelligently.

Why include these political and military leaders? I think they already know that they can say things that we, as institutions, perhaps cannot say.

· Kaja KallasExplanation of why the proposed high-level group would include former leaders.

She also said that a majority of member states supported the existing institutional structure of the European External Action Service and opposed giving the European Commission more powers in foreign policy. In her view, the difficulty is that member states jointly develop foreign policy while the Commission controls instruments including trade, development aid, enlargement, migration and visas. Kallas has called for greater use of constructive abstention and other treaty tools, along with a stronger link between foreign ministers’ work and debates among European leaders.

It is really about identifying what Europe must do differently so that it can defend itself better, faster and more intelligently.

· Kaja KallasDescription of the group’s intended purpose.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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