Europe’s diplomatic service was already struggling to assert its relevance when it was rocked by an alleged corruption scandal.
Investigators are probing allegations that sensitive information linked to a public tender — awarding the College of Europe the contract to host a diplomatic training program — was illegally shared ahead of the official decision. The suspected wrongdoing dates to the tenure of former European External Action Service (EEAS) chief Federica Mogherini.
The timing is awkward. As the bloc is repeatedly sidelined in global negotiations over peace in Ukraine and ceasefire in Gaza, doubts are growing over whether Europe can act with unity abroad — the very issue the EEAS was created to alleviate.
That ambition made its way onto the EU agenda in the late 2000s, when many in Brussels believed the EU’s great project of economic integration had reached its natural limits and the next step had to be political. Against the backdrop of the Balkan wars and new security threats, the bloc created the EEAS and the post of High Representative — a bid to fuse national diplomacies into something resembling a European voice.
Fifteen years on, that voice remains faint. Deep fragmentation among member states, an increasingly centralized European Commission, and a diplomatic corps often seen as answering to national capitals first have conspired to erode the project.
“The idea of the external action service was very much, ‘if you pull this together … you will be able to strengthen … to do this foreign policy more jointly’,” said Louise van Schaik, the head of the EU unit of the Clingendael Institute, a Hague-based think tank focused on international affairs. “But then, in reality, you have bigger EU member states that have an international clout.” That, she said, “inherently undermines the power of the external action service to be a strong foreign policy actor.”
“To lose influence, you need to have it in the first place,” said Cristiano Sebastiani, president of Renouveau et Démocratie, a trade union representing EU employees. Member states, he recalled, were never fully prepared to relinquish sovereignty over foreign policy and defense.
The EEAS pulled apart from day one
The EEAS was built on unresolved contradictions, according to Jost-Henrik Morgenstern-Pomorski, a political scientist specialising in European politics and author of The contested diplomacy of the European External Action Service. “Different people wanted different things.”
The first idea, he said, was to build a leaner, more strategic version of the Council Secretariat — the home of EU diplomacy until 2009.
“Something closer to member states, more dynamic, less bureaucratic, kind of a big think tank on foreign policy where there's strategic planning going on and policy options are prepared in close coordination with the member states,” Morgenstern-Pomorski said.
The rival vision pushed the EEAS closer to the European Commission. In the end, the latter model prevailed.
Even though the EEAS’s role was spelled out in the Lisbon Treaty in 2007, when the institution finally came to light in 2011, “it was treated with a lot of suspicion by basically everybody,” he said.
What emerged was an institution searching for identity. The High Representative, currently former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, is meant to embody EU diplomacy, overseeing 144 delegations abroad that function as embassies, while also serving as the Commission President’s deputy.
So far, though, the arrangement has blurred responsibility rather than clarified it.
“Who is the person to call for foreign affairs? Do we call [Trade Commissioner Maroš] Šefčovič, [EU Council Chief António] Costa, [Kaja] Kallas, or [Ursula] von der Leyen — or all of them?” asked Thomas Thaler, a consultant at APCO. The reality, he said, is they all “need to coordinate among each other.”
“Instead of trying to unite Europe more, it has fragmented the image of ‘who do you call in Europe’ even more,” agreed Sophie Pornschlegel, an analyst at the European Policy Centre.
Public opinion seems to mirror the doubts. According to a survey by More in Common, a British NGO focused on development aid, majorities in five EU countries doubts the bloc’s ability to influence world affairs. In France and Germany, only 18% and 19% of respondents, respectively, believe that the EU acts in a unified manner to pursue its objectives abroad.
An EEAS in the Commission’s shadow
For some, the EEAS’s struggles are inseparable from the troubled relationship with the European Commission.
Under Von der Leyen, the Commission has been steadily consolidating power, centralising communications and decision-making to a degree some observers now describe as quasi-presidential.
“The EEAS is meant to be somewhat independent of the Commission and ‘somewhat independent’ doesn't work if, at the same time, you have a structure that tries to centralise decision making,” said Morgenstern-Pomorski.
Others argue that institutional imbalance is compounded by personal rivalry.
“Von der Leyen sees herself as the person who’s meeting with other heads of state and government, and that leaves less space for Kaja Kallas,” argued Thaler, the veteran EU affairs specialist.
In late 2024, reports surfaced that the Commission wanted to consolidate EU delegations into 18 hubs, arguing that some of them were no longer strategically relevant and too costly. Kallas pushed back, proposing a leaner restructuring that would cut only 100 positions between 2026 and 2027, not the 800 initially floated.
Relations between the EU executive and the EEAS have been strained from the outset, with Kallas booting out then-secretary general Stefano Sannino, now one of the top suspects in the corruption investigation alongside Mogherini. The move outraged those close to Sannino, who later landed a top job at the Commission, and was seen as Kallas’ attempt to draw a line under the past.
Institutional rivalry has persisted. Von der Leyen’s European Democracy Shield, announced in November, risks overlapping with existing EEAS’ disinformation tools. Earlier this year, Kallas tried to recruit Martyn Selmayr into the EEAS leadership, only for the Commission to reportedly block the move by creating a new role elsewhere.
“When the Commission is so clearly hostile, you should lean more towards the Council,” said an EU diplomat, asking to remain anonymous to speak candidly. But, he added, that’s not what’s happening.
A European service built on national loyalties
Yet proximity to member states is hardly the EEAS problem, according to many observers who argue national capitals already exert heavy influence over the bloc’s foreign agenda — sometimes too much.
The service’s roughly 2,500 staff are frequently drawn from national diplomatic corps, a practice critics say dilutes institutional loyalty and undermines the goal of a common foreign policy.
“There has been an invasion of temporary agents designated by member states,” said Sebastiani, adding that temporary affiliation makes lasting allegiance to the EU difficult.
It was that flaw the diplomatic academy launched in 2022 was supposed to remedy, training officials whose primary loyalty would lie with Brussels rather than national capitals. But that initiative has now been tainted by the same corruption allegations as the EEAS itself.
Still a diplomatic dwarf, but an economic heavyweight
Few analysts see an easy way out. As long as capitals remain reluctant to cede power over foreign affairs and defense, the EEAS is likely to be hamstrung.
And even then, current circumstances — from Russia’s war on Ukraine to US President Donald Trump’s confrontational trade agenda — may be better tackled through the Commission’s economic leverage than through traditional diplomacy.
“The things we can do to boost our position and our strategic autonomy are in the realm of the economy, where the Commission has a bigger role to play,” van Schaik said.
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