The EU’s diplomatic service under the leadership of Kaja Kallas is facing an unprecedented bout of internal turmoil – exposing existential questions about whether the bloc’s foreign policy machinery is fit for purpose. Created under the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the European External Action Service (EEAS) was designed as a compromise between Brussels and national capitals: strong enough to coordinate diplomacy on behalf of the EU’s governments collectively, independently of the European Commission, but weak enough not to threaten national foreign ministries.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Caught between capitals and Commission Over 15 years later, officials across the EU institutions say that compromise is increasingly under strain. “There should be fewer intrigues between and inside the European Commission and the External Action Service,” former Estonian foreign minister and current MEP Urmas Paet told Euractiv. “It looks really ridiculous with burning issues around the world.” The EEAS occupies an awkward place in the EU’s institutional architecture: formally independent, yet politically tethered to both the Commission and the member states. The tension is embodied in the “double hatted” office held by Kallas as simultaneously both the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, or HRVP for short.