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EEAS High Representative

A new DG for Foreign Affairs at the… Council. Strange!

(BRUSSELS2) Leonardo SCHIAVO will take up new duties as Director General for Foreign Affairs and Humanitarian Aid at the Council of the European Union. This from August 1st. The EU Council of Ministers (Ecofin) accepted the appointment on Tuesday (July 12). Leonardo was the chief of staff of the secretary general of the Council, Javier Solana and the deputy chief of staff of Emma Bonino when she was European commissioner in charge of humanitarian aid. The ambition of this new general direction of the Council will remain, officially, limited to the preparation of the work of the Council, and will be of "small dimension". Which is a bit contradictory with the appointment of such a leader - who has a certain political stuff and multiple experience.

Leonardo Schiavo began his career at the European Commission as a legal expert on consumer rights in what was not yet a department of consumer and environmental affairs (1979-1982) and as an anti-trust inspector in DG Competition (1982-1984). He participates in the Italian presidency. And after a stint at DG Agriculture, moved to DG Relex first as assistant to the Deputy Director General, in charge of Economy and Trade, then as Deputy Head of Unit Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand (1992) and Head of Policy Analysis and Planning Unit (1993-1995). Deputy Chief of Staff to Italian Commissioner Emma Bonino (1995-1999), he then moved to Javier Solana, High Representative for Foreign Policy, as Deputy Chief of Staff (1999-2003) then Chief of Staff (2003-2006) . He then joined Emma Bonino in Rome as chief of staff when she was Trade Minister (2006-2008). When the Prodi government fell, he returned to Brussels to the Council of the EU as Director General of DG H (Justice and Home Affairs) and to the office of the Secretary General as Deputy DG in charge of development, enlargement and support to the Foreign Affairs Council.

Comment: This appointment seems to be at odds with the mechanism required by the Treaty of Lisbon. It means first of all a partial failure for Catherine Ashton six months after the start of the European External Action Service. It also marks a reluctance on the part of the Member States (which we knew) but also of the European institutions (which we knew less because the "fight" took place behind the scenes) to enter into the "Lisbon" dynamic. Finally, it signifies a certain inadequacy of the device of the Treaty, conceived in a theoretical way, but which proves to be concretely ill-suited to current diplomatic and political realities. It will be necessary at some point to open the debate, not to do what seems to be a "soft" unraveling of the new institutions but to see how to adapt them, concretely and practically to "real life".

Nicolas Gros Verheyde

Chief editor of the B2 site. Graduated in European law from the University of Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and listener to the 65th session of the IHEDN (Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale. Journalist since 1989, founded B2 - Bruxelles2 in 2008. EU/NATO correspondent in Brussels for Sud-Ouest (previously West-France and France-Soir).

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