Behind the flow of depressive commentaries related to the appointments of Catherine Ashton and (less so) Herman van Rompuy, there are more EU foreign policy news coming – the announcement of the new Commission’s line-up. One interesting development is the merging of enlargement and neighbourhood portfolios under one Commissioner – Stefan Fule (Czech Republic). A couple of months ago I heard a murmur in Brussels saying that it is way too early to give the enlargement portfolio to a new member state. Apparently, it is not. (I also heard the Czechs would never get a substantial portfolio because of Klaus’ foot-dragging on Lisbon.)
More importantly, I never thought that enlargement-wary EU member states would ever accept the merging of the enlargement and neighbourhood portfolios under one commissioner (though formally, Barroso is in charge of the distribution of portfolios). For many in the EU this would send all the wrong signals to states like Ukraine and Moldova that want to join the EU. It is equally true that for many this would send all the right signals (as well as the right framework for approaching relations with the EU’s neighbours). I thought the EU needs a separate commissioner for the neighbourhood, but I did not think it was politically feasible to have a commissioner for “enlargement and neighbourhood”. I proved wrong.
Merging enlargement and neighbourhood is in some ways an innovation, but in some ways is simply going back to the origins. Back in 2002-2003 Commission’s task force that developed the neighbourhood policy consisted of officials coming overwhelmingly from the then DG enlargement (that started to look like a useless behemoth once the negotiations on the big-bang 2004 enlargement were finished). Back in 2003 some expected that enlargement and neighbourhood could indeed be run from the same hq. Now that vision seems to be taking shape.
Though its shape is still unclear. The formal announcement mentions that Stefan Fule will be in charge of DG enlargement and the “The neighbourhood parts of DG External Relations (RELEX) and of the EuropeAid-Cooperation Office (AIDCO)”. But then there is also a footnote saying “Without prejudice for the creation of the future European External Action Service (EEAS).” It is not entirely clear (to me at least) what will be the relationship between the two bits of Fule’s portfolio (enlargement and neighbourhood). Does it mean that the neighbourhood parts of Fule’s team will be under EEAS and the enlargement parts will not?
EU foreign policy has always been fragmented between various actors, not just between the EU Council secretariat (Solana) and the Commission, but also within the European Commission with separate commissioners and DGs holding various bits of the foreign affairs (Relex) business – external relations, enlargement, development and trade. Now the Relex family seems to be even bigger with Catherine Ashton as the new high rep, Karel de Gucht on trade, Stefan Fule on enlargement and neighbourhood policy, Rumiana Jeleva on international cooperation, humanitarian aid and crisis respons, and Andris Piebalgs on development. It looks like Lisbon was designed to fix the Council-Commission cleavage, but not the intra-Commission fragmentation of foreign policy matters. So it remains to be seen how the new and extended family of Relex commissioners will work. For the taste of the mess to come note that five out of six footnotes in the formal announcement of Barroso’s team are trying to deal with the complexities in the Relex family. EU footnotes are usually pandora boxes for inconsistencies.
However, I hope the merging of the enlargement and neighbourhood bits of the commission will help. Unlike EU’s foreign policy at large, EU’s enlargement policy is more institutionalised, more coherent and better-organised. Placing the neighbourhood policy under the wing of the enlargement commissioner could shield it at least partly from the pains of birth of the External Action Service.
#1 by Andreja on November 28th, 2009 - 10:43 am
Dear Nicu,
Coming from a Western Balkan country receiving the news about the merging of the portfolios and more importantly merging of the several regions into one post, sends out a message that raises the concerns over the future enlargement with the WB.
I am not quite sure of the capacity of the new Commissioner to deal with several regions at the same time and more importantly deal with several policies/ issues (Accession talks, Bilateral disputes, SAA, ENP, EaP etc.). The practice showed that all of the WB countries can achieve good progress only if they are under the Brussels eye and unfortunately I think this focus will now be blurred. As countries of the WB are queuing up in the line for accession the need for greater EU presence is bigger. In addition the uncertainty over Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo require double effort by the EU and not once again leaving these issues to the US to deal with.
On the other hand I am very much positively excited because the EU finally between the lines sends a signal of opportunity for the EaP countries and for their integration processes. The leaders of the countries have to now clearly understand this message and immediately start thinking about how they can use this golden opportunity for further integration into the Union.
Regards from Skopje,
Andreja
#2 by Julien Frisch on November 28th, 2009 - 11:49 am
I am also quite interested in see how Cathy Ashton & Štefan Füle will share the work on the neighbourhood.
I suppose that there might be a doubling organisationally, so I expect Ashton to have a team on the Neighbourhood within the External Action Service while Füle will have his whole DG dealing with both, the Neighbourhood and enlargement.
The question that remains for me is who will be responsible of (which) funds…?!
#3 by nicu on November 28th, 2009 - 1:34 pm
Andreja,
well… yes, I understand that symbolically this does not send a very promising signal for the Balkans (the same goes for the bulking together of the Southern and Eastern neighbours)… In real life terms though, I would not be that worried. In real life – the main problem is not that the EU is engaged too much with the Southern neighbours at the expense of the Eastern neighbours, or with the eastern neighbours at the expense of the Balkans. The big clash is not a clash of priorities between Balkans vs South neighbours vs Eastern neighbours, but a clash between an inward looking EU, and an EU that thinks strategically and therefore develops a more ambitious foreign policy and engages more actively with the Balkans AND the neighbourhood. This is the real problem with the EU.
As for the lumping together of the Balkans and the neighbourhood – I do not see how this could worsen EU’s performance in the Balkans. The attention factor is important. But there is a huuuge attention deficit in the Eastern neighbourhood if you count the size of commission delegations or visits by high-level EU officials (for example the EC delegations in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova have 1-2 diplomats. Solana has been once to Azerbaijan and Armenia, and twice to Moldova in 10 years). This is not a problem for the Balkans – they get attention, visits, money, advisors, EU missions, etc etc. The real problem lies with the states of the region themselves. It would be unfair to say that the EU underinvested in the Balkans. It could do more of course, but Bosnia’s or Serbia’s problems on their path to the EU will come not because Ukraine will be covered by the same commissioner, but for their own internal insufficient commitment to reforms, or from the fact that EU member states will be sceptical of this or that step in their accession path. and the development of nore high-politics issues like the Greece-Macedonia issue, Slovenia-Croatia disputes, Bosnia’s disfunctionality etc etc will hardly be shaped by the fact that Ukraine is covered by the same commissioner.
#4 by nicu on November 28th, 2009 - 1:42 pm
Julian, I do not think it makes any sense to double the institutions. Probably Fule will be in charge of the ENP units within EEAS (that’s my reading of the footnote above), but Cathy Ashton will be in charge of overall co-ordination of the other foreign policy dossiers + high-politics dossiers like iran, transatlantic relations, wars in the neighbourhood, summitry etc. while the technical and daily aspects of the ENP will be run by Fule.
of course Ashton might like to see institutionally the other relex commissioners (except the one for trade) as de facto deputies. but given that formally all commissioners are equal and vice-presidents of the commission are primus inter pares only, this is not necessarily going to be the case automatically. and like usually a lot will depend on personal relations.
#5 by Kent on November 30th, 2009 - 4:35 pm
What about the talk that this portfolio has been combined so that it can be split apart for the potential new commission post given to Iceland or Croatia once they join? There are rumors that Brussels is looking for ways to avoid the problem it had with the accession of Romania and Bulgaria which got relatively meaningless commission portfolios because there was not a lot left to cover.
On the other hand, does anyone really think that a new member state would be given either of these high profile portfolios (ENP or enlargement)?
#6 by nicu on November 30th, 2009 - 5:50 pm
Kent, yes… the rumour makes sense – the portfolios seem to be easily \splittable\, but at the same time might be too big for new and small member states like croatia and iceland…