Kaja Kallas has a daunting job. The European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs is supposed to speak for the union on the international stage, backed up by the bloc’s foreign ministers and the heft of the European Commission.
That’s not how it is working out.
A former Estonian prime minister, Kallas has come second in a power struggle with commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who has pulled more and more responsibility to steer foreign and defence policy into her 13th floor office in the commission’s Berlaymont headquarters.
National governments also jealously guard their influence on international affairs. On more than one occasion Kallas has floated a plan – a €40 billion war chest for Ukraine funded by national contributions, or an expert group to advise on gaps in Europe’s defences – only to be forced into an embarrassing climbdown by foreign ministers.
As Kallas has fought this turf war in Brussels, the EU has been straining to make its influence felt on the world stage. The union has been sidelined in US-led negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and found itself unable to use Europe’s considerable economic leverage to restrain Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
Interviews with foreign ministers, multiple high-ranking national diplomats, current and former Brussels officials and Kallas herself reveal clear frustrations with the EU foreign policymaking machine, but no clear consensus on how to change things.
The dysfunction has led France and Germany to call for a rethink.
“Something is not working as it should,” said a minister from another member state, who spoke to The Irish Times on the condition they would not be named.
Ursula von der Leyen walks with Kaja Kallas in the Berlaymont, the headquarters of the European Commission. Photograph: Martin Bertrand/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images Eastern threat
Coming from a Baltic state neighbouring Russia, Kallas was picked to be the EU’s high representative on foreign policy in 2024, in part because she was a hawk who understood the nature of the eastern threat facing Ukraine and Europe.
In her previous role as Estonia’s prime minister she led a vocal campaign pressing other EU states to commit more funds to aid Ukraine defences.
The EU’s 27 national leaders choose the bloc’s high representative in a grand bargain that usually involves selecting someone to head the European Commission and the European Council president, a job that involves chairing EU summits (and commenting on foreign policy).
The high representative is responsible for leading the European External Action Service (EEAS), the union’s diplomatic corps of more than 5,400 diplomats and officials, who are split between Brussels and 145 embassies overseas.
Kallas chairs regular meetings of foreign ministers in Brussels, who give political direction. There are big egos in that room. Getting all 27 to agree can be tough. Common decisions on foreign policy need to be settled by unanimous agreement.
“She’s a hard worker … You want somebody in that role who is going to be bold, push things,” was the assessment of one minister.
However, there have been missteps where Kallas prematurely floated a plan or policy without locking down the buy-in of member states.
[ Kaja Kallas: EU ban on Israeli settlement trade would be ‘principled stance’Opens in new window ]
“You have to have them squared off before you go out,” one diplomat said.
She is rarely described as diplomatic, and is prone to gaffes.
Kallas wears a second hat, as a vice-president of the European Commission, attending weekly “college” meetings where von der Leyen and the other commissioners direct the EU’s powerful executive that proposes laws. That’s the von der Leyen show.
The EEAS has been running since 2011. It was a creation of the Lisbon Treaty, which took some decision-making authority away from national capitals and gave the union’s institutions in Brussels a more defined foreign policy role, ideally to make things more coherent.
Catherine Ashton, a British Labour politician, was the first high representative. The high representative is sometimes referred to as the EU’s top diplomat. And Ashton was a diplomatic figure. She preferred to operate behind the scenes and didn’t mind letting foreign ministers “take the win”, according to an official who worked inside the EEAS at the time.
The usual problems existed at the outset of the new institutional set up. Who speaks on behalf of the EU? “Who do you phone? That is still the issue,” the former official said.
Von der Leyen has sought to make the EU executive body a greater geopolitical player, hoovering up decision-making authority for herself and a close circle of advisers
One incident during Ashton’s tenure highlighted the dilemma.
Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general involved in the Srebrenica massacre and other atrocities during the brutal Balkans wars, had just been arrested. Mladic, who died last month, would later be convicted of war crimes and genocide by an international tribunal.
Ashton and her staff were boarding a jet leaving Brussels when news of Mladic’s arrest broke.
The entire flight was spent on the phone co-ordinating how the EU should respond. The conversations about who should comment first were still going on when the flight landed, according to one person involved. By the time the Europeans got their ducks in a row, “the rest of the world has moved on” the former official said.
A blurred division of power has created a turf war between the smaller EEAS and the 32,000-bureaucrat European Commission.
Von der Leyen has sought to make the EU executive body a greater geopolitical player, hoovering up decision-making authority for herself and a close circle of advisers.
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The German politician has put herself at the centre of efforts by Brussels to help European countries spend more on their defence and co-ordinate the flow of vital financial support to Ukraine.
Her officials in the Berlaymont are writing a new security strategy, due next month, and the commission president had talked about establishing a unit to prepare intelligence assessments, doubling up on work already carried out by EEAS staff.
Responsibility for trade policy, development aid and enlargement rests squarely with the commission, rather than the EEAS. For the first time there is an EU commissioner dedicated to defence.
The Berlaymont also controls the purse strings. “The EEAS actually has no money, it relies on the commission. It becomes an empty shell,” one former official said.
Reform plan
It is worth remembering that Europe is a significant trading power, said Jonatan Vseviov, secretary general of Estonia’s foreign ministry.
However, he said the EU is not using that leverage effectively, “partly because of the institutional framework that we’ve put in place in Brussels, and partly because we’re 27 member states that require unanimity to do anything of consequence”.
Politicians regularly complain that the EU is viewed as a “payer and not a player” internationally, and fails to convert the huge amount of aid it contributes to all corners of the world into hard influence.
Constantinos Kombos, foreign minister of Cyprus, said the union has a public relations problem. “I think there is a serious issue in relation to our capacity to promote all the work we are doing on the ground,” he said.
Unhappy with the set-up, Berlin and Paris want to overhaul how the EU crafts foreign policy. A working paper drafted by the two governments suggested the EEAS be absorbed into the commission, with expanded powers for the high representative.
The paper, seen by The Irish Times, says this would give Kallas more authority to oversee defence, development aid and relations with Europe’s regional partners.
Foreign ministers discussed the proposals in Wicklow this month. There was a sense that the EEAS wasn’t being allowed to do what it was established to do.
Two sources in the room said there was no consensus behind the reform plan. This is only the start of the debate.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Photograph: EPA Occupied Territories
Perhaps the best illustration of the EU’s inability to speak with one voice, or make its voice heard, is Gaza and the West Bank.
Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, who spent three decades in the EEAS and its predecessor, including as EU ambassador to the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2020 to 2023, said divisions between member states, and within the European Commission, had fatally stymied Europe’s response for the past three years.
“We have huge leverage to the Palestinian Authority through our aid package, and we have very significant leverage towards Israel, given our trade partnership as their largest commercial partner, key investor, as well as one of the largest suppliers of arms … But unless you bring those two things towards the objective of the two-state solution, you have failed,” he told The Irish Times.
The real issue wasn’t the “cockfight” between von der Leyen and Kallas, but the fact that shifts in foreign policy needed the approval of all 27 member states, Kühn von Burgsdorff said.
Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and, to a lesser extent Italy, form a coalition inside the EU opposed to sanctioning Israel. This group has consistently blocked efforts by Brussels to take a harder line.
National capitals are very protective of their veto power and unlikely to give it up.
Absorbing the EEAS into the commission, while retaining the unanimity rule for foreign policy decisions, would simply shift the problem into another institution, Kühn von Burgsdorff said.
“It’s not about where it sits, it’s very much about the decision-making arrangements on foreign policy that decides whether the EU is a lame duck or a credible actor responding with resolve in real time.”
Big decisions
In an interview with The Irish Times, Kallas said there was a need for more “coherence” between the different parts of Europe’s foreign policy machine.
Asked about tensions with von der Leyen, Kallas drew a parallel between the prime minister and foreign minister in a government. “The prime minister can always, you know, take a different position,” she said. “On a personal level we get along very, very well.”
Kallas said her role falls “in between” the direction of travel signalled by ministers and the levers of power held by other EU commissioners.
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, speaking with Jack Power, Europe Correspondent with The Irish Times. Photograph: Thierry Monasse
If the EU wants to be a serious geopolitical power, it has to think of trade, development aid, visa schemes and migration policy as “foreign policy tools”, Kallas said. “This is also how geopolitical actors operate.”
The difficulties she was coming up against were features “written into the establishment of the External Action Service”, she said. There needs to be “sincere co-operation” between the EU’s institutions.
Everything comes down to the EU’s ability to make big, joint decisions without excessive dithering. That’s always going to be tough in a political union of 27 national governments, and multiple permanently staffed Brussels institutions, at times pulling in different directions.
“The frustration in EU common foreign policy very much comes from us not being able to reach a decision on important topics and you know institutional change does not really change that,” Kallas said.
Certain governments were theoretically in favour of flexibility and settling debates by qualified majority vote, rather than unanimity, until they found themselves on the losing side of a political discussion, she said.
Germany, for example, has led a charge to shift towards majority rules. At the same time Berlin has opposed a plan for an EU ban on trade coming from settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories to be pursued as a trade measure, which would require a sizeable majority, rather than as a foreign policy sanction needing unanimous support.
It’s the opportunity, window, to really look ahead, and think, okay: what are our lessons learned? Do we change our working methods while we have this spirit of sincere co-operation in the room?
— Kaja Kallas
The European Commission, another proponent of ending national vetoes, is similarly hesitant to table an Israeli settlement trade ban for a qualified majority vote.
Sitting in her EEAS office, Kallas said the founding treaties of the European project envisaged the political community working on the basis of consensus, but that was different from everyone having a “veto right”.
She would like to see a greater use of “constructive abstention”, where a member state could opt out of certain joint EU positions or stances, but let the others proceed. “There is a spirit of compromise around that table,” she said of foreign ministers’ EU talks.
That wasn’t the case during the final years of Viktor Orbán’s far-right Hungarian government. Budapest consistently vetoed EU aid to Ukraine. Orbán’s defeat in parliamentary elections this April removed that block, a big relief in Brussels and other capitals.
Rather than relax, Kallas said this should prompt a proper evaluation. “I think it’s the opportunity, window, to look ahead, and to really look ahead, and think, okay: what are our lessons learned? Do we change our working methods while we have this spirit of sincere co-operation in the room?
“What’s important is to be credible in the eyes of the rest of the world,” she said.
Kallas will find everyone is in unanimous agreement with her there, but that is where the consensus ends.