When the European External Action Service (EEAS) was launched in 2011, it was billed as a quiet revolution. For the first time, the European Union would possess something approaching a unified diplomatic arm — a service capable of projecting European interests, values and influence across the globe.
It was meant to turn the EU from a regulatory giant into a geopolitical actor. Fifteen years on, the verdict is far less flattering. The EEAS exists, it functions, and it occasionally performs well. But it has never escaped the fundamental contradiction at its heart: ambition without authority, reach without resolve.
The logic behind its creation was sound enough. The EU is the world’s largest trading bloc, one of its biggest aid donors, and a major sanctions power. Yet for decades its external action was fragmented between Commission departments, the Council, and national foreign ministries. The Lisbon Treaty sought to rationalise this chaos. A High Representative would speak for Europe. A diplomatic service would implement policy. Brussels would finally have a single phone number.
What emerged instead was a hybrid institution — part Commission, part Council, part national foreign service — with blurred lines of command and no sovereign backing. The EEAS has spent much of its existence navigating internal complexity rather than shaping the external world.
The Early Years: Structure Without Strategy
Under its first High Representative, Catherine Ashton, the EEAS was largely consumed by its own construction. Embassies had to be merged, staff reassigned, reporting lines clarified. Ashton deserves credit for building the service from nothing, but her tenure was marked by caution and low visibility. Europe was present everywhere, influential nowhere.
Federica Mogherini, who succeeded her in 2014, brought greater political fluency and a higher international profile. She presided over the Iran nuclear deal — arguably the EEAS’s single most significant diplomatic achievement — and spoke eloquently about multilateralism. Yet even then, the service remained constrained by member state vetoes and strategic incoherence. The EEAS could facilitate diplomacy, but not enforce outcomes.
Those limitations became brutally clear during the tenure of Josep Borrell Fontelles, who took office in late 2019 at a moment when Europe’s geopolitical environment was deteriorating rapidly.
Borrell: When Rhetoric Met Reality
Borrell arrived promising candour and realism. He spoke of Europe needing to “learn the language of power” and warned that the world was no longer shaped by rules alone. The diagnosis was correct. The execution was far less convincing.
His most infamous failure came early. In February 2021, Borrell travelled to Moscow amid outrage over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The visit was intended to assert European firmness. Instead, it descended into a diplomatic humiliation. While Borrell sat beside Sergei Lavrov, Russia expelled three EU diplomats. Lavrov openly mocked the EU at a joint press conference, describing it as an “unreliable partner”. Borrell returned to Brussels conceding that Russia had “no intention” of improving relations.
The episode was not merely embarrassing; it exposed the weakness of EU diplomacy when unsupported by hard leverage. Borrell had gone to Moscow without a credible threat, without unity behind him, and without any mechanism to compel respect. It was diplomacy stripped bare.
Nor was this an isolated misstep. Under Borrell, the EEAS struggled repeatedly to translate moral clarity into political influence. Nowhere was this more damaging than in the Middle East. While the EU responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with remarkable unity — sanctions, arms funding, diplomatic isolation — its response to the war in Gaza was fractured and hesitant. Borrell himself acknowledged that Europe risked accusations of double standards. In much of the Global South, those accusations stuck. Europe’s claim to be a principled actor began to look selective.
The problem was not that Borrell lacked opinions; it was that he lacked presence and authority. Member states pulled in different directions, and the EEAS could do little more than issue carefully balanced statements. Washington, not Brussels, remained the indispensable actor.
Ukraine: Unity by Necessity, Not Design
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did, however, reveal the EEAS at its most effective. Faced with a clear existential threat, EU member states rallied. Sanctions were imposed at unprecedented scale. Military aid flowed through the European Peace Facility. Diplomatic coordination was intense.
Yet even here, cracks appeared. Hungary repeatedly blocked increases in military funding, leaving frontline states waiting months for reimbursement. Borrell publicly fumed, floated workarounds, and threatened institutional creativity — but ultimately failed to overcome unanimity rules. The spectacle of Europe’s foreign policy chief pleading with recalcitrant capitals only reinforced how little independent power the EEAS actually wields.
This pattern — strong rhetoric, constrained delivery — defined Borrell’s tenure. He spoke bluntly about the need for strategic autonomy, but presided over a system incapable of enforcing it.
Bureaucracy, Careerism, and the Limits of Mandate
Internally, the EEAS has remained a bureaucratic maze. Its hybrid staffing model has produced divided loyalties and uneven standards. National diplomats often rotate through Brussels without fully integrating into a European ethos. Reporting systems are cumbersome. Secure communications have lagged behind modern requirements. Borrell himself once complained publicly that he learned more from newspapers than from his own diplomatic network — an extraordinary admission for the head of a global service.
Beyond these structural inefficiencies lies a subtler but no less serious problem: like most EU institutions, the EEAS is dominated by career civil servants whose first instinct is often to protect their own positions and the institution itself, rather than pursue the service’s mandate. Internal reviews have repeatedly observed that staff prioritise procedural compliance over strategic initiative, risk avoidance over bold diplomacy.
When a crisis arises, the machinery grinds slowly, constrained by hierarchy, approvals, and an ingrained culture of self-preservation. Ambitious foreign policy projects are watered down; innovative approaches postponed or abandoned. For a service charged with giving the EU a global voice, this inward-looking mindset has proved a persistent obstacle to impact.
Budgetary pressures have compounded these problems. Despite a footprint spanning more than 140 delegations, the EEAS operates on relatively modest resources. Inflation, security costs, and administrative burdens have forced trade-offs between visibility and substance. Election observation missions proliferate, while long-term strategic engagement often suffers.
Worse, institutional credibility has taken repeated hits. The procurement scandal surrounding the European Diplomatic Academy — launched during Borrell’s tenure — exposed vulnerabilities in oversight and governance. Raids, arrests, and investigations involving figures close to the EEAS damaged its reputation at precisely the moment when trust mattered most.
China, Africa, and the Limits of Consensus
Beyond Europe’s immediate neighbourhood, the EEAS has struggled to shape outcomes. Its approach to China — described as “partner, competitor, and systemic rival” — sounds nuanced but often translates into paralysis. Economic interests diverge. Strategic priorities clash. Brussels talks, Beijing listens politely, and member states pursue their own deals.
In Africa, the EEAS has overseen numerous civilian and military missions, with mixed results. Some have contributed to stability; others have become footnotes. Europe’s influence has waned as Russia, China, and regional powers move more decisively. The EU remains generous, but generosity is not the same as power.
Achievements Worth Acknowledging
To dismiss the EEAS entirely would be wrong. It has professionalised EU diplomacy, created a global network, and ensured that Europe is at least present in international forums. It has coordinated sanctions regimes, supported peace processes, and provided continuity where national governments change.
When Europe acts collectively, the EEAS is the machinery that makes it possible. But that “when” remains conditional — dependent on crises severe enough to force unity.
Fifteen Years On: An Unfinished Experiment
The EEAS’s core problem is not competence, but consent. It cannot compel member states. It cannot override vetoes. It cannot act faster than the slowest capital. Borrell’s tenure exposed this brutally. His bluntness stripped away comforting illusions, revealing an institution designed for a world that no longer exists. Its careerist culture and risk-averse bureaucracy further reduce the service’s capacity to translate ambition into outcomes.
If the EEAS is to mature into a genuine instrument of power, Europe will have to confront an uncomfortable truth: effective foreign policy requires choices, hierarchy, and, ultimately, sovereignty. Without that, the service will remain what it has largely been for fifteen years — impressive in form, cautious in substance, inward-looking, and perpetually one crisis behind events.
The EEAS was created to give Europe a voice. It succeeded. What it still lacks is the authority, culture, and decisiveness to make that voice relevant.
