Well this is the EU at its finest, isn’t it? It talked the new Lisbon Treaty up a storm before it came into place. Taking a frankly rose-tinted view of what the new posts it contains will mean for foreign policy and external representation: allowing it to speak with one voice and giving the EU a coherent presence on the world stage. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that while the tools may be there, you still need politically-willed hands to make good use of them.

And what was member states’ first act of blessing for the new treaty? Choosing a foreign policy chief – Catherine Ashton – with no foreign policy experience and on the basis of a set of laughably arbitrary criteria (politics, gender and geography).

The second act of blessing has been an incessant sniping since she took over the job. Amid ‘great’ surprise that the novice to the world of diplomacy has not hit the ground running. She not only needs to master the various policy briefs, she also needs to do a job that three people did before her (the High Represenative, the external relations commissioner, and the foreign minister of the rotating presidency country) and set up a new diplomatic  service.

With a foot in both the commission (where she is vice-president) and in the council (representing member states), she is exposed to internal rivalries and turf wars of both camps.

It all started as off largely Gallic-tinged and as a whisper. Now the criticism is deafening. And following her absence at the informal defence ministers meeting in Spain, it has big names behind it.

Here is the French defence minister, Herve Morin.
“Isn’t it rich that this morning, to display the ties between Nato and the EU, we have the Nato secretary general (Anders Fogh Rasmussen) here but not the high representative for the first meeting since the Lisbon treaty came into effect.” His Dutch colleague twittered on her “notable” absence while Spain’s Carme Chacon “regretted” it.

Sure Ashton has made mistakes. Although her decision – much criticised – not to fly to Haiti after the earthquake was correct (it would have been an unnecessary photo opportunity in a time of great misery), some of her subsequent actions have been questionable.

She seemed to have allowed commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to call the shots when it came to the appointment of the EU ambassador in Washington while not going to the defence ministers meeting in favour of a trip to the Ukraine president’s inauguration gives the impression of a lack of interest in what ought to be a key part of her dossier. Her detractors note that Javier Solana, her predecessor, made all the meetings.

But the open criticism is self-indulgent and unhelpful. It serves neither the EU nor Catherine Ashton who, lest member states forget, is supposed to be the EU foreign policy chief until 2014.

Having said that, the only person who can stop it is Ashton herself. The criticism has now reached a self-fulfilling momentum. She needs to stand up to her detractors and say: “Enough is enough.”