By Andrew Jay Rosenbaum
ANKARA
European External Action Service (EEAS), headed by Federica Mogherini, is playing an increasingly important role in foreign affairs, including that of Turkey's accession to the EU, experts told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.
"The EEAS has become much more visible and much more important," Giles Merritt, secretary-general of the Friends of Europe in Brussels, said in an interview with Anadolu Agency.
"Once we talk about foreign fighters, cyber and energy security or indeed causes and channels of migration we are firmly talking about foreign policy. Here the EEAS has a key coordinating position," Christoph Meyer, professor of European and International Politics at King’s College, said.
In November, Mogherini, who is both high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy and European Commission vice president, completed one year in office.
"That period has seen the EEAS emerge from adolescence," Merritt said.
The diplomatic service now leads in establishing many foreign policy initiatives during a period that includes tough challenges like the refugee crisis, the Syrian conflict, continuing troubles in Ukraine and the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.
"Today, the EEAS has the main responsibility for European foreign policy and in pursuing a comprehensive approach, bringing all the relevant instruments together to achieve an aim, for example Turkey’s cooperation on the migration issue," Christoph Meyer, professor of European and International Politics at King’s College in London, said in an interview with Anadolu Agency.
A good example is the key role played by the diplomatic service in the most recent discussions of Turkey’s bid for EU membership.
"On the political issues, the EEAS has taken over the leadership role from the commission directorate on enlargement," Stefan Lehne, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Brussels, said.
"And Mogherini has been instrumental in bringing the Turkish accession back onto the agenda of many member states which had ceased to see it as a pressing issue," Lehne explained.
The fact that Mogherini is both vice president of the commission and head of the EEAS has helped to cement her new role, and enabled the EEAS to break down barriers among commission policymakers.
"The EEAS necessarily has the core coordinating role in this respect. It has been widely realized that EEAS has been hampered in achieving its objective by the fact that much of the expertise and resources were still with the commission so better coordination is indispensable," Meyer said.
Meyer cites the example of the operation "SOPHIA (EUNAVFOR MED)" which aims to disrupt people-trafficking networks bringing refugees to Europe.
As agreed on Sept. 28 by the EU ambassadors within the Security Committee, the mission is to reduce further loss of lives in migration, and to disrupt human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Mediterranean, according to a note from the commission published on Dec. 15.
The operation has had considerable success. On Sept. 20, for example, about 4,500 migrants were rescued at sea off the coast of Libya by mission forces, according to an EEAS statement.
On refugees, Mogherini and the EEAS have been at the center of policy making.
"Migration has also been a key domain of intervention by Federica Mogherini," analysts at the Center for European Policy Studies noted in a paper published on Dec. 16. She has played an instrumental role in the formulation of the European Migration Agenda, the analysts said.
But Mogherini has done much more, according to the center’s analysts. "The diplomatic work by Mogherini, supported by her staff at the EEAS, for instance in supporting the UN-brokered peace deal to form a government in Libya, and by widening the ‘E3+3’ format with Iran in an effort to reboot discussions on how to bring about an end to the violence in Syria have been major contributions," the analysts said.
To be sure, there are still challenges in getting the commission, the member states, and the EEAS on the same page.
"The creation of the EEAS caused several turf wars with the commission," explained Lorenzo Vai, a researcher in European Studies with the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, told Anadolu Agency in an interview.
"The main reason of this situation is the lack of a clear division of tasks between the commission and the EEAS," Vai said.
Mogherini has to work to decrease the political independence of the directorates, Vai pointed out.
"It’s a very hard job that also implies a decrease of political independence by the directorates," Vais said.
The great test for Mogherini and the EEAS will be the development of the EU’s global strategy, which is part of the EEAS mandate determined by the June 2015 European Council meeting. The EEAS will deliver a paper on the new strategy, which must be approved by member states.
This could be a springboard for a coordinated EU foreign policy. Or, it could come to naught.
"My sense is that it will be very challenging in the EU’s current political environment for this document to successfully move foreign policy in a more strategic direction. With the reality that Europe is facing, with citizens scared that their governments are unable to manage the current refugee inflows at a political or practical level, many member states feel more security in the national level of government. Even if management of the crisis would likely be more effective at the European level -- it is just not politically possible at the moment," commented Susi Dennison, an analyst at the European Council for Foreign Relations in Brussels.
But Nathalie Tocci, an expert with the Istituto Affari Internationali does not agree, saying that the time is "overripe" for the creation of such a strategy.
"The connectivity of our times means that threats cannot be wished away through closure. The unprecedented opportunities that a more connected world present can only be seized through proactive engagement beyond our borders," Tocci wrote in a note published in November 2015.
