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BRUSSELS ― The head of the EU’s diplomatic service has given a staunch defense of her institution as it fights off suggestions that it be shut down.
In an email seen by POLITICO, Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, wrote to the 5,000-strong staff of the European External Action Service, insisting that it “added value” to the bloc. She was responding to a French government discussion paper that floated radical options for the EEAS that included bringing it completely under the control of the European Commission.
“I would … stress how much added value we have provided to Europe as a team, especially at a moment of full-scale war raging in Europe,” Kallas said in her email.
The French document, which POLITICO has confirmed the contents of, follows long-running criticism from national capitals and EU officials who complain that EU diplomacy is too slow-moving, institutionally dysfunctional and victim of an escalating turf war between the EEAS and the Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen.
