Ashton spends a short week in the cold

(BRUSSELS2) The High Representative is making a trip of... the utmost importance this week to the Far North. Three days of travel in the Nordic countries - two from the EU Finland and Sweden, one outside the EU, Norway - devoted to the Arctic, a strategic subject. I can't resist the urge to give you details of the program for these meetings, which shows that... in the end, a timetable for a High Representative (+ Commissioner + President of the Foreign Affairs Council) is not as heavy as we say so.

On the menu: Tuesday (March 6), meeting with Finnish officials, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto?, Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja and his Development counterpart Heidi Hautala; followed by a meeting with the President of the Sami Parliament, Klemetti Na?kka?la?ja?rvi. Political meetings followed by a speech during the seminar at the "Arctic" Center of the University of Lapland. Wednesday (7 March), visit to the LKAB mine in Kiruna, Sweden, with Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, then visit to the satellite station Erange before going to Norway, to Svalbard to visit the university center with the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gahr Sto?re. Thursday (8 March), visit to the Kongsvegen glacier and its weather station, then speech at the conference on Europe in Oslo. There will then be only a short leap to go to the informal Foreign Affairs Council in Copenhagen. And here it is... a week closed! Don't worry about the pictures, a team from EBS - the channel of the European Commission - will follow the visit. We will thus be able to have a few selected images and videos throughout the week.

Comment: Certainly the question of the Arctic is indeed a strategic question of the greatest importance. And we can conceive of devoting time to it. Especially since the European Union has applied to become a permanent observer to the Arctic Council. But three whole days... at a time when Russia and Iran have a major electoral change, when Syria is on fire... is that quite adequate? " You have to do these trips at some point, otherwise you never do. replied a member of the High Representative's cabinet. Either... We can also say that spending a few days with foreign ministers before an informal meeting is not useless (Monday, C. Ashton is in Prague with the 4 ministers of the Visegrad triangle: Polish, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian). There is thus a whole series of objective reasons which can justify this trip. But we have a feeling of deja vu, of permanent shift, in the tempo of Catherine Ashton which does not seem to get better with time or to be accompanied by an enhancement of her ambition for action. There is something like embarrassment, even shame, in seeing a High Representative "wasting" precious time in this way, always being "next to the plate", when she still has so little time to devote to "her" troops at the European diplomatic service, to prepare meetings of the European Commission or to answer urgent questions asked in other parts of the world...