How many mics does EU diplomacy need?

France and Germany are pushing for a rethink of the EU’s diplomatic service. But the real question is not whether Kaja Kallas is doing the job well. It is whether the job, as designed, can be done at all.

Is the European External Action Service about to be dismantled?

Not tomorrow. But the fact that Paris and Berlin are even asking the question says a lot about the state of EU diplomacy. For France, Germany and other Member States, the EU’s diplomatic corps is in need of a major overhaul.

The EEAS is seen as too slow, too inefficient, and too often stuck somewhere between the Commission, the Council and national capitals. One proposal under discussion would transfer some powers currently held by the High Representative and the EU’s diplomatic service either to the Commission or back to Member States.

The Kallas problem, or the problem with Kallas’ job?

Kaja Kallas is taking part of the blame. That was probably inevitable.

Several EU capitals have reportedly grown frustrated with her style, especially on sensitive files where they believe she moves too freely, or too far, without a clear mandate. Her recent reported comments in Mexico comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s apartheid era has only reinforced this perception in some capitals.

That tension is not new. It is built into the job and reflects competing visions of what the HRVP should do. For some, the position exists to represent an agreed EU line, not test how far the line can stretch. For others, it should be a political figure willing to say something sharper than the usual Brussels consensus, especially when that consensus has become a synonym for paralysis.

As a result, the High Representative is one of the strangest creatures in the EU institutional fabric.

Kallas is Vice-President of the European Commission, serving under Ursula von der Leyen. Yet she also chairs the Foreign Affairs Council, where she answers politically to Member States and must navigate their often-competing red lines.

She is tasked with coordinating the EU’s external action, but she does not control all the instruments that shape it. She is the face of EU foreign policy, but European Council President António Costa also represents the Union internationally at the level of heads of state and government. And when the EU has a major international summit, the Commission President is usually there too.

The result is a role caught in a permanent balancing act.

When the High Representative is too visible, capitals fear Kallas is freelancing. But if she is not visible enough, she risks becoming irrelevant. Josep Borrell often appeared trapped in that latter category.

He spoke a lot, sometimes bluntly, yet when the EU faced major foreign policy moments, the political stage was usually occupied by Charles Michel, Ursula von der Leyen, or the Member States themselves. The infamous Sofagate incident in Ankara illustrated the problem perfectly: long before Kallas, the EU’s external representation was already a crowded stage.

Is the EEAS still relevant?

The EEAS was created by the Lisbon Treaty and formally launched in 2011. If the EU was to become a more coherent global actor, it needed something closer to a diplomatic service. Not a national foreign ministry, but at least a structure capable of connecting EU delegations, Commission expertise, Council diplomacy and national diplomats.

Fifteen years later, the result remains ambiguous.

The EEAS is not the Commission nor the Council. It’s not a national diplomatic service either. It is a functionally autonomous body under the authority of the High Representative, composed of officials from EU institutions and national diplomatic services.

That hybrid nature was supposed to be its strength. Increasingly, it has also become its weakness.

EU foreign policy is not only made in the EEAS. Trade, enlargement, neighbourhood, development and economic security policies are all Commission-driven. Migration deals are often shaped directly by the Commission and the European Council.

This means the EEAS is expected to deliver coherence in a system that constantly produces fragmentation. The new DG MENA is a good example.

The Commission presents it as the entry point for relations with the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf, bringing together different strands of Commission work and supporting partnerships with the region. On paper, that may improve delivery.

Politically, it also creates an obvious overlap with the EEAS and EU delegations, especially in one of the most sensitive regions for EU foreign policy.

This is where Ursula von der Leyen has been particularly effective. She has understood that in today’s EU, power lies where instruments are: money, regulation, trade, industrial policy, sanctions implementation, procurement, conditionality and crisis tools.

The Commission doesn’t need to formally own foreign policy to shape it. It simply needs to control the policies through which foreign policy is now exercised.

That leaves the EEAS in a difficult position. It may speak the diplomatic language, but it doesn’t always hold the operational levers.

Why the Franco-German move is so politically strange

This is why the Franco-German push is fascinating. On the surface, it appears Member States are trying to take power back from the EEAS. However, some of the options reportedly being discussed could end up strengthening the Commission instead.

That would be a strange outcome for capitals that have spent years complaining about Ursula von der Leyen’s concentration of power.

If foreign policy shifts further into the Commission, Member States may gain efficiency, but they could also lose influence. The Commission President doesn’t report to foreign ministers in the same way the High Representative does. She doesn’t chair the Foreign Affairs Council, nor is she institutionally dependent on monthly consensus-building among foreign ministers.

The Commission President has her own political mandate, her own College of Commissioners, her own administrative machinery and, increasingly, her own geopolitical agenda.

This is the paradox. Capitals are frustrated with the EEAS because it is slow and messy. But it is slow and messy partly because it is tied to them. The Commission may be able to act more quickly, yet it is also further removed from direct national control.

Member States therefore need to face an uncomfortable truth. If they want a more effective EU foreign policy, they may have to accept a greater concentration of authority at the EU level.

The real problem isn’t the organigramme, it’s the unanimity

Brussels loves organigrammes.

When something doesn’t work, the instinct is to redraw boxes, rename services, move competences, create coordination platforms, appoint special envoys, merge units (and split them) or write a new strategy explaining why this time it will be more coherent.

But the crisis of EU foreign policy is fundamentally a power problem.

On foreign policy, Member States still hold the key. They disagree on Israel and Palestine. They disagree on China. They disagree on how far to go on economic security and defence integration. They disagree on how much autonomy Europe should seek from the United States. And in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, unanimity remains the rule.

No diplomatic service can turn 27 conflicting national positions into a single strategic line by administrative magic. This is why blaming Kallas is easy, but insufficient.

Before her, Borrell struggled. Before Borrell, Mogherini struggled. Before Mogherini, Ashton struggled. Four High Representatives, different styles, different political profiles, and one underlying constraint: the EU wants the symbolism of a foreign minister without giving that foreign minister the authority of one.

And as the EU is moving towards further enlargement, everyone knows this will make decision-making harder. If EU foreign policy is already difficult at 27, it will not become easier at 30 or more. That is why this debate cannot be separated from the wider institutional conversation around treaty change.

The EU has tried to build an efficient diplomatic system. It wanted a common voice without a common political authority. It wanted a foreign policy without fully deciding who has the final say.

Kaja Kallas may be part of the story, but she isn’t the root cause.

She is simply the latest person asked to perform an almost impossible role: be visible, but not too visible; political, but not too independent; European, but never ahead of the Member States; strategic, but always consensual.

That is why the position so often disappoints expectations. The job is an institutional trap.

And that is ultimately the question confronting Europe. The EU does not only need to decide what to do with its diplomatic service. It needs to decide whether it is willing to create the political conditions for a genuine common diplomacy in the first place.