The appointment of Pierre Vimont, a French career diplomat, and David O'Sullivan, an Irish old hand in the EU institutions, came as no surprise as their names had already been circulating widely for months.
Vimont, who will be executive secretary-general, is a career diplomat who has served as France's ambassador to the EU and the United States. O'Sullivan has spent most of his career at the European Commission, where he lately headed the trade department.
As chief operating officer, O'Sullivan will be responsible for the day-to-day operational management of the European External Action Service (EEAS), while Vimont will handle relations with the Council of Ministers, which represents the governments of the 27 EU member states.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner expressed "the pride of France" following Vimont's appointment. French State Secretary for European Affairs Pierre Lellouche said Vimont would bring "exceptional qualifications" to the EEAS, which he said were "unanimously recognised".
The appointments show that relations between member states and EU institutions are "going smoothly," according to EU sources, who expected other high appointments to confirm the good relations.
Germany's Helga Schmidt and Poland's Macej Popowski are now expected to be appointed as deputies to Vimont. Other high positions are expected to be filled with personnel from the EU institutions.
With Vimont and O'Sullivan in place, the European External Action Service can now move ahead with staffing by transferring officials from the Commission's external service (Relex) and the EU Council of Ministers, as well as with officials brought in from national administrations.
The EEAS top management can now also start to decide on the size of units and who will work where. Last but not least, a decision still needs to be made on which building will host the EEAS.
No quotas, but 'respect for size'
The question of national quotas is not on the agenda any more, but pressure remains on EU foreign policy chief Cathy Ashton to "respect the size of the countries," whatever the formula may imply.
Piotr Maciej Kaczyński from the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels said Ashton might consider the size of diplomatic services in the member countries when making her decision. In some cases, he said, small or medium-sized countries have rather large diplomatic services, making them stronger candidates.
"Measuring diplomatic weight is not the same as measuring economic weight. For example, it turns out that Hungary is bigger than Austria, because there are more Hungarian diplomats than Austrian diplomats," Kaczyński remarked.
According to him, the largest diplomatic services in the EU are the UK, Germany and France, all of which have more than 10,000 diplomats. Next come Italy (above 7,000), Spain (above 6,000), Poland (above 4,500), and the Netherlands and Belgium, with around 3,000 each.
With just over 2,000 diplomats, Romania has more staffers than Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria and even Belgium and the Netherlands. The latter two countries include both diplomats and employed staff in their statistics, Kaczyński said.
"But would that mean that there should be more Romanians in the EEAS?" he asked.
