1209 - On the entity of the Foreign Minister of the Union

N. Lygeros
Translation from French: Ph. Alsina

Within the framework of competences of the Union via the treaty of the European constitution, with regard to the definition and the setting in motion of a foreign politics and common safety policy, including the progressive definition of a policy of common defense as specified in the fourth paragraph of the article I-12, one of the greatest innovations is the creation of the entity of the Foreign Minister of the Union, creation that is clarified in the I-28 article. This creation is important on various levels. First of all it directly exploits the concept of qualified majority, which is defined in the I-25 article and that enables the Union to function more effectively with 25 Member States. That means that the Foreign Minister will have to play an essential part and that the Union wishes that its nomination could be carried out efficiently. However this vote is carried out with the agreement of the president of the Commission. This fact shows the search for an internal structural coherence. The Foreign Minister leads the foreign politics and of common safety of the Union. Moreover as it chairs the Council of the Foreign Affairs, its person unifies the point of view of the council with respect to the external world. Thus it takes care of the coherence of the global action. In this way, the European Union obtains an interlocutor able to represent it in order to face the challenges of the foreign diplomatic relations. Also for the first time in the history of the European Union we have a single representative. It is thus not surprising that this innovation causes some trans-Atlantic irritation. Indeed the increase in the economic weight of the European Union represents a danger to the macro-economic competitors, but not only, since this time the geopolitical extension is obvious. Moreover, as the treaty specifies it, this change can be used amongst other things as a basis for a later evolution in geostrategic matters. These potentialities, much more real for our adversaries than for ourselves, largely modify our functional structure. By increasing the coherence of our external action, we increase in the same way our internal coherence. Within this open structure not restricted with an official framework, we stabilize our operating mode while acting on the external singularities.