Dear Members,

Please have a look to an interesting paper presented by Stefani Weiss (Bertelsmann Stiftung).

After spending the last six month following closely the negotiations on the establishment of the European External Action Service, Mrs Weiss declares that in all the time the EEAS was negotiated the core question on how the EEAS has to be structured so that it can best serve the interests of the Europeans under increasingly difficult conditions never took centre stage. Quite the contrary, Member States, Council and  Commission were more concerned to protect their own sinecures than working together in shaping a service with which the EU will become fit for 21st century external policies.