Can a diplomatic Baroness defend the UK’s right to decide its Foreign Policy?
Civitas, 14 January 2010
On Monday 11th January, Baroness Catherine Ashton faced a 3 hour hearing in the European Parliament (EP) to confirm her recent appointment as the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Following her “grilling” by MEPs, one witness commented: “her answers necessarily had the sense of newly-learnt policies”.
Baroness Ashton’s inexperience might have placated those concerned by the prospect of a powerful EU ‘Foreign Minister’, except that her timid approach could still spell danger because a power vacuum will almost certainly be filled by the European Commission.
Under the Lisbon Treaty, “essential authority [on Foreign Policy] remains with EU governments”, rather than the EU Commission. Catherine Ashton should honour this crucial safeguard and ensure the authority of national Ministers and diplomats by asserting her independence from the Commission. But instead, OpenEurope worryingly observes that Baroness Ashton is already “basing her office in the Commission’s headquarters and using Commission officials as her key advisers”…
Lisbon Treaty supporters have repeatedly insisted that the Treaty is crucial to increase the EU’s power on the world stage (remember Miliband’s comment that the EU must be able to “stop the traffic in foreign capitals”?). Baroness Ashton will have a hard time tapering such grand expectations; for example, during her hearing in the EP this week, a German MEP stated “we want more for Europe’s foreign minister than you yourself want”… But if EU leaders really had wanted ambitious politicians to fill the new EU posts, they should have appointed individuals with more experience and weight on the world stage (i.e. Tony Blair as EU President?!). In contrast, Herman Van Rompuy’s appointment as EU President, and the choice of Baroness Ashton as Foreign Minister suggest that the EU opted for individuals most unlikely to “rock-the-boat” of EU policy-making.
Foreign relations are inherently complex and delicate (as the long history of EU squabbling over Foreign Policy demonstrates) so whilst EU Leaders might look to Ashton to “speak – and act – as one in world affairs”, getting 27 nations to agree a single policy might be an impossible challenge for a diplomatic Baroness.