Diplomatic Service Agreement: here is the text! and some comments

22th June 201011th May 2018 Nicolas Gros Verheyde

(BURXELLES2) After the agreement on the EU's diplomatic service (1), we are beginning to see the details of the negotiations.

Here are the finalized texts (amendments in bold):

- the draft decision as it emerges from the last discussions (to download here) accompanied by two declarations.

- one on political responsibility (download here),

- the other on the basic organization of the central administration of the Service (download here).

And a few comments... Among the changes let's note (quickly):

At the structural level

- The creation of a post of “director general for the budget” who will have direct access to the High Representative (article 4). A board will therefore bring together the High Representative, the three Secretaries General (2), and the Director General of the Budget. The "club of 5" in a way!

- The creation of an "institutional relations" department responsible in particular for relations with the European Parliament and national parliaments (declaration 1).

- the creation of a "coherence" department, responsible to the HR for ensuring the coherence of the EU's external action, in particular with the other members of the European Commission (declaration 1).

At the level of recruitment

- Sustained attention to geographical balance (this is a political commitment only, considering 7ter).

- A better balance of European agents and national agents: at least 60% of European civil servants at Administrator (AD) level, in the long term. This figure also includes diplomats from Member States who have been established (Article 6-8). In the meantime, as the Commission is told, there will be sustained attention to national candidates, in order to allow their integration into the diplomatic service. The European Parliament wanted to avoid appropriation by the Member States.

- the possibility for national diplomats to remain in the diplomatic service for a maximum of 10 years: 4 years renewable twice + 2 exceptional years. The European Parliament refused to allow them to be subject to too rapid a national rotation (article 2 note 6).

- the obligation for each institution to reinstate its original members (Article 6-10).

- The transfer of all staff will take effect on January 1, 2011 (article 6bis).

- In the appendix, there are details of all the "Commission" and "Council" services transferred to the Diplomatic Service.

At the level of financial and budgetary management

- The strengthening of the internal audit capacity (article 3).

- Commitments on the ways of managing the budget and incurring expenditure (article 7).

- The distribution of tasks with the Commission for the CFSP budget, the Instrument for Stability, the instrument for cooperation with industrialized countries (article 8-6).

- A meeting clause is set for mid-2013 to update this decision and verify its proper application, particularly in terms of geographical balance (article 12).

Le calendar remains very tense: session at the European Parliament in July, adoption at the General Affairs Council on June 26, publication of the decision in the process. We will have to wait a little longer for the “staff” and “budget” regulations. Start of recruitment in October. Operational service in December. In fact, in 2011.

At Catherine Ashton, and at the European Commission, we now cross our fingers and we have placed a candle at the "Saint Schuman" for the European Parliament to ratify the agreement and give its backing to the whole package.