The World Is Burning as a Power Struggle Rages in Brussels

While crises continue around the world, Brussels is consumed by a fight over posts, authority and control of European foreign policy. The more than year-long conflict between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas could now lead Germany and France to support a major scaling back of the European External Action Service.

The Financial Times reported that the Commission is considering bringing large parts of the service’s responsibilities back into its own directorates. The service was created under the Lisbon Treaty to plan and carry out the Union’s foreign and security policy. Before it began work on Jan. 1, 2011, under the then-high representative Catherine Ashton, foreign relations had been concentrated in a Commission directorate led by a commissioner for external relations. Austria’s former foreign minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner held that role from 2004 to 2009.

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The high representative must have appropriate levers.

Under the reported reform plans, the External Action Service would retain relatively limited functions, including peacekeeping and military training missions. The latter are already organized by the armed forces of selected member states in some cases, including Germany and Poland for Ukraine-related training.

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The idea is to strengthen the role of the high representative and support Kaja Kallas’s action. These proposals have caused some controversy. We will discuss them.

France, meanwhile, wants Kallas to gain greater authority inside the Commission to represent the EU abroad. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Kallas “must have appropriate levers” and that the aim was “to strengthen the role of the high representative and support Kaja Kallas’s action.” He acknowledged that the proposals had caused controversy and would be discussed at an informal meeting of foreign ministers in Ireland.

The word “controversy” barely captures the institutional battle between the Commission headquarters at Rue de la Loi 200 and the External Action Service headquarters at 9A Rond-Point Schuman. Von der Leyen has explicitly described her body as a “geopolitical Commission,” yet Article 17 of the EU treaty limits the Commission president’s formal role in representing the Union abroad, except in foreign and security policy and other areas specified by the treaties. The dispute therefore reaches beyond administrative reform, touching the balance of power at the top of the EU.

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geopolitical Commission