Shedding Light on Europe’s External Action Service

The creation of the new European External Action Service will be one of the key issues defining Europe’s future role in international affairs and its ability to promote peace, human rights and development around the globe. However, the debate just about how this new service should look like, which powers it will have and how it can be hold accountable has so far been taking place in the dark. Member states have tried to forge a deal in the back room, keeping the public and civil society organizations at bay. No longer! was the theme behind a conference organized by Franziska Brantner, MEP, and her colleagues of the Green group in the European Parliament.

That there was a real need for public debate and civil society involvement was evidenced by the huge turnout at the conference. With more than 120 people attending, the room was fully packed when representatives of NGOs, the European Parliament and the European Commission discussed key aspects of the European External Action Service’s architecture and policy priorities. Eva Joly (MEP), Simon Stocker (Eurostep – European Solidarity Towards Equal Participation of People) and Christian Leffler (European Commission) vividly debated the new service’s potential effects on development and poverty eradication. Human rights were at the centre of a subsequent panel bringing together Heidi Hautala (MEP), David Nichols (Human Rights Democracy Network) and Charles-Michel Geurts (European Commission). The new service’s peace-building capacities formed the subject of the final round of discussion with Franziska Brantner, Catherine Wollard (EPLO – European Peacebuilding Liason Office) and Genoveva Ruiz Calavera (European Commission).

Franziska Brantner, who chaired the conference throughout, was very pleased that civil society finally got its say in this crucial debate. To her disappointment, however, no representative of member states or the Council Secretariat was prepared to take part in the discussions. For Franziska Brantner this was just another proof of the important role the Parliament plays in the ongoing debate on the External Action Service: it has to be the forum enabling civil society to get involved and making sure that the new service will actually serve the citizens’ needs and foster peace, human rights and development, rather than being a mere playing field for secretive member state diplomats.