On the eve of her presentation of her plan for the European External Action Service (EAS), Catherine Ashton was said by newspaper reports to have pulled off a coup in the power the plan would give her.

"All the elements are on the table to advance on putting the EEAS in place," Ashton said on March 25, unveiling the plan.Even allowing for the irony lent by the fact that Ashton presented the plan a week ahead of deadline, the phrase "she spoke too soon" was extremely apposite. The European Parliament’s four largest groups, the centre-right EPP, the liberals, socialists and Greens, achieved a rare unanimity in writing off the Ashton plan as "unacceptable".

The EU foreign policy chief said, on presenting the plan, that she had had "extensive consultations" with the European Commission, EU member states and the European Parliament. Sharply, the four groups said in a joint statement that, "despite many contacts over the past weeks, the High Representative has chosen not to take (the European) Parliament’s views sufficiently into account.

The Ashton proposal, the four groups said, needed "decisive changes" or the European Parliament would reject it.

For the record
The EAS, Ashton said, was called a service for a reason. "I have agreed with (European Commission President Jose) Barroso and commissioners (Andris) Piebalgs and (Stefan) Fuele on how we will manage the different development and co-operation programmes and that the EAS will be our common service in this respect."

The Ashton plan would allow staff from national diplomatic services, from the European Council and the European Commission to work together in the new service "on an equal footing," she said. The EAS would, in her plan, manage its own administrative budget for which it would answer to the European Parliament. However, given that current rules allow only the European Commission to implement the EU’s operational budget (development aid included), heads of missions would be allowed to manage operational spending on behalf of the EC.

This means, in effect, that the EC would have a substantial say – in effect – about how funds such as development aid are spent, while Ashton and an EAS reporting to her would, on paper, be in charge of overall strategic decisions.

This scenario, likely to be perplexing to anyone outside the machinations of Brussels institutions, and perhaps to some inside them as well, was meant as a compromise in the turf war over development aid between the European Commission and the future EAS.

The idea was that Development Commissioner Piebalgs would oversee EAS proposed spending on development, while Fuele would have this role in relation to spending on countries in Eastern Europe and other areas within his Neighbourhood Policy portfolio.

Addressing in her 12-page proposal document an issue that long since emerged as a bone of contention, Ashton said that the EAS "shall comprise a meaningful presence of nationals from all the member states" – a bow to various statements and documents that had been doing the rounds to ensure that smaller, newer EU states would have a proportion of the key jobs in the future diplomatic corps.

Undiplomatic reception
The EPP, socialists, liberals and Greens gave the Ashton plan short shrift. The unanimity among the groups, however, may also lie in the fact that the battle over the EAS may have some ideological elements but in essence is a tug o’ war among EU institutions, and the post-Lisbon Treaty European Parliament is eager to maximise its muscle.

The joint statement by the four said that the Ashton plan had failed to address the question of political accountability to the European Parliament: "A coherent and effective foreign policy service must be fully accountable to the European Parliament in budgetary and political terms". No one could fail to notice the use of the word "fully".

Further, the group of four said, the EAS "must be ambitious and include all aspects of external policy – including development". "It is only through creating greater coherence that the EU will be able to have a voice and a role in the world," the joint statement said. The proposed artificial separation of part of the development competences between EAS services and Commission services was a "recipe for incoherence".

The proposed structure, with an omnipotent Secretary-General and Deputy Secretaries-General does not provide the "politically-legitimised" deputies that the EU foreign policy chief would need for her to do her job properly.

"What is needed are political deputies who can engage on her behalf with both Parliament and partners in third countries," the group said. Separately, the socialists – along with an unequivocal threat to sink the proposals using Lisbon Treaty powers – said in a statement of their own that Ashton should have sole power over the nomination of their deputies, rejecting attempts by ministers to impose their candidates.

The socialists said that the "design" of development policy should be the job of the Development Commissioner, while Ashton would have "the last word" to ensure smooth co-ordination of EU external action.

Smooth co-ordination seems a faint hope under current circumstances. Ashton, in between trying to find a saleable version of her plan, also continues to face having to respond to any number of foreign policy sagas that have a habit of flaring up, and still garners only the faintest of political support while facing the harshest of criticisms in the media – and even lost her spokesperson who transferred to another post in the EU bureaucracy.

If there is to be a genuine EU long-term diplomatic initiative on the global stage, it seems the prerequisite will be the achievement of a diplomatic coup within the bloc itself; to wit, an agreement within its own ranks on how its diplomatic service is going to work. An agreement that, right now, many feel could remain elusive for some months.