If anyone had any doubts that putting together the European Union’s new diplomatic service would be an utterly messy task, that is now an undisputed fact. A high-profile ambassadorial list released this week provoked publicly aired quarrels rather uncharacteristic of diplomats, and it raised questions about the future effectiveness of the EU corps.
The long-anticipated list, unveiled by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Brussels, was apparently based not on merit, but on what Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called “esoteric considerations.”
What are those? A quick look at the list shows that the most important ambassadorships are going to diplomats from the oldest EU members in the West — China was given to the Germans, Japan to the Austrians and South Africa to the Dutch. What about less important but plush posts? Of those, the Spanish got Argentina and Singapore went to Luxembourg.
So the considerations Sikorski referred to had more to do with where the diplomats come from, rather than what they can accomplish in their respective positions. “Appointments should be made on merit,” he said. “We in the new member-countries have people who speak the languages of the former Soviet Union, we have expertise there.”
Four posts out of 29 went to diplomats from Central and Eastern Europe. Despite Sikorski’s protest, Poland did better than any other former communist country, winning South Korea and Jordan. The Bulgarians got Georgia, and Afghanistan had gone to the Lithuanians earlier.
“I have appointed the best people for the right jobs,” said Ashton, whose official title is EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, as well as vice president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive body. She was also criticized for choosing only eight women.
“We have made a start to address the important issues of geographical and gender balance,” Ashton said in an apparent admission that those problems are not yet resolved.
The nominees, who have to be approved by the European Parliament, may be the “best people” for the jobs from their country, but it’s questionable whether they are the best from any EU state. It’s not clear, either, that the top criteria during the selection process were actually skills, qualifications and experience.
“We are deeply disappointed,” said Slovenian Foreign Minister Samuel Zbogar. “We expected more transparent decisions and that geographic balance would be taken into account, in particular for those states, like Slovenia, which have no presence at all in the EU’s foreign institutions.”
Creating the European External Action Service — the diplomatic corps’ official name — is a daunting task, and Ashton has an impossible job. She won’t be able to please everyone even if she really wants to. But more consultation with Eastern European members would go a long way.
If there is hostility among diplomats from different countries even before the foreign service’s launch, which is expected in December, it will likely affect trust and their ability to work together at the dozens of missions they are setting up around the world.
Here is the full list released by Ashton’s office on Wednesday:
China — Markus Ederer (Germany)
Japan — Hans Dietmar Schweisgut (Austria)
South Africa — Roeland van de Geer (Netherlands)
Afghanistan — Vygaudas Usackas (Lithuania)
Albania — Ettore Sequi (Italy)
Argentina — Alfonso Diez Torres (Spain)
Macedonia — Peter Sorensen (Denmark)
Bangladesh — William Hanna (Ireland)
Jordan — Joanna Wronecka (Poland)
Uganda — Roberto Ridolfi (Italy)
Senegal — Dominique Dellicour (Belgium)
Angola — Javier Puyol Pinuela (Spain)
Botswana — Gerard McGovern (Ireland)
Burundi — Stephane de Loecker (Belgium)
South Korea — Tomasz Kozlowski (Poland)
Gabon — Cristina Martins Barreira (Portugal)
Georgia — Philip Dimitrov (Bulgaria)
Guinea-Bissau — Joaquin Gonzalez-Ducay (Spain)
Haiti — Lut Fabert-Goossens (Luxembourg)
Lebanon — Angelina Eichhorst (Netherlands)
Mozambique — Paul Malin (Ireland)
Namibia — Raúl Fuentes Milani (Spain)
Pakistan — Lars-Gunnar Wigemark (Sweden)
Philippines — Guy Ledoux (France)
Singapore — Marc Ungeheuer (Luxembourg)
Chad — Helene Cave (France)
Zambia — Gilles Hervio (France)
China (Deputy) — Carmen Cano de Lasala (Spain)
Papua New Guinea — Martin Dihm (Germany)
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Continue reading about EU diplo corps gets messy before launch
Part 1: Momentous change brings new challenges to Bulgaria
Part 2: True German unity proves elusive
Part 3: Poland embraces past and moves ahead
This special section was first published by The Washington Times
Continue reading about 20 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall
BURGAS, Bulgaria — The evening news bulletin on Bulgarian National Radio began with a familiar item: Another meeting of the Politburo of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Then the announcer uttered a sentence that left Bulgarians stunned: The country’s dictator of more than 35 years, Todor Zhivkov, had just been “relieved of his duties.”
It was Nov. 10, 1989. I was only 15, but understood that what had happened was not just a simple personnel change in the Soviet Union’s most trusted satellite. Within minutes — though a day late — I learned of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Last month, as I sat in the same room in my parents’ apartment where I heard the news, I realized that those events had changed my life more fundamentally than anything else I have experienced before or since. Had communism not collapsed, I would never have been allowed to go to the United States…
Continue reading about Momentous change brings new challenges to Bulgaria
KRAKOW, Poland — A black Trabant pulled up in front of the Sheraton hotel and its driver helped passengers out of the boxy, cut-rate car that remains a symbol of communism two decades after its collapse.
The “communist tour” of Krakow was over. The 23-year-old guide, Eryk Grasela, had taken a Washington Times reporter and photographer to Nowa Huta, a suburb built in the 1950s as a “model communist city” and counterpoint to “bourgeois” old Krakow, long known as Poland’s cultural capital.
While other former communist countries have tried to erase many Cold War memories since they became democracies in 1989, Poland has embraced its past, made the best of it and moved on. Today, Poles seem more satisfied with their lives than many others in the region…
The White House, unaware of historic norms, had been on track to give more than the usual 30 percent of ambassadorial jobs to political appointees until objections from career diplomats forced it to reconsider, administration officials say.
As a result of the reversal, some donors to President Obama’s election campaign — as well as senior advisers and other supporters of the campaigns of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — are likely to find their hopes of being rewarded with an embassy dashed.
“The White House has come around, and we truly expect that, at the end of the process, the balance will be within historical norms,” said one senior administration official who asked not to be named because he was discussing internal deliberations…
Continue reading about Career diplomats protest Obama appointments
