Sunday 30 May 2010

European External Action Service - Budget & posts

According to a Council document forwarded from the Council Secretariat to the Council's budget committee, there is the need for a draft budget and a staff plan for the European External Action Service (EEAS) for 2010.

The proposed EEAS budget (this is a Council proposal, not a formal Commission proposal!) is an amendment to the 2010 EU budget and it is necessary to have it even before the EEAS is formally in place because:
"there is a serious and real risk of major disruption of operations (including payments of salaries and other obligations), at headquarters and in delegations, which would be prejudicial for the reputation of the newborn EEAS."
The figures (indicative as explained in the footnote!) can be seen on the bottom of page 6 of the document which shows that for 2010 the EEAS could have 1563 posts of which 411 come from the Council and 1114 from the Commission, 38 posts would be newly created. Of the 1563 EEAS people, 1082 would work in Brussels and 481 in delegations all around the world. A detailed split of the the 411 Council staff members is in the annex.

As you can see, the figures at present don't include any member states' diplomats because the EEAS is not in place yet. It also doesn't seem to involve much additional posts except for the 38 proposed.

However, this Council Secretariat's proposal gives quite a good indication on the possible dimensions of the new EEAS and the possible share of posts coming from the EU bureaucracies.

I suppose that this is not the last word, though.

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