After months of behind-the-scenes work, the shape of the European External Action
Service – the EU’s diplomatic corps – is now coming into view. The Bruxelles2 blog has obtained a version of its structure with some of the key names penciled in. You can find it here.
The top three jobs in the EU’s diplomatic headquarters will go to a Frenchman, a Pole and a German. The only senior UK official, besides Catherine Ashton (and her personal aides) is
long-serving diplomat and geo-strategist Robert Cooper. But his name, rather mysteriously, is followed by a question mark.
Of the EU “ambassadors” that have been appointed until now, there is one one Brit, ex-Ambassador Ros Marsden, who is now the EU envoy in Sudan. German Markus Ederer, a top foreign ministry official in Germany, is to take up the EU’s Beijing post, while Austria’s current ambassador to the EU, Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, will go to Japan.
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