EU: MEPS CALL FOR NEW DIPLOMATIC CORPS TO BE PART OF COMMISSION.

The report, drafted by Mr Brok, the chairman of the EP's Foreign Affairs Committee, sets out ideas for the EAS which is meant to be created once the constitution has been ratified. The aim is to increase the EU's effectiveness as a global player by setting up a common diplomatic corps, drawn from officials from the Commission, the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers and member states.

EU leaders at their summit meeting in December 2004 asked the Council General Secretariat and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to report to the June 2005 summit on the progress of preparations for setting up the EAS. The Commission and the Council are understood to have drawn up their own separate options papers and will be meeting soon to discuss ideas together.

The Brok report says that the service would help to avoid "overlapping, inefficiency and wasteful use of resources" in the EU's external policies. The service would assist the European Foreign Minister (EFM), another innovation of the constitution. How it operates will be decided by the European Council based on a proposal from the EFM, after consulting the European Parliament and winning consent from the Commission.

The report says that the EAS should be "fully incorporated, especially for logistical, administrative, and budget purposes, within the Commission's staff structure so as to ensure that no organisationally independent body or agency is set up out of reach of political control". However, the service should have a legal obligation to implement the decisions of each institution which is responsible for different areas of external policies (e.g. the Council for Common Foreign and Security Policy and Security and Defence Policy, and the Commission for areas such as development cooperation, trade policy, etc.)

Among organisational options, the report says that incorporating the EAS fully into the Commission would not work because "important components of foreign and security policy remain within the intergovernmental sphere". However, developing the service from the existing Council departments attached to the EU foreign policy chief...