Meanwhile ....

I am in the middle of a long (probably too long) blog about Ukraine that, I suspect, will please no-one. In the meantime, I thought I would point out that the EU has not been completely helpless and inactive. No, indeed, it sent its Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy Štefan Füle last week to Kiyiv to meet with President Yanukovich and with Arseniy Yatsenyuk of Batkivshchyna, Vitali Klitchko of Udar, and Oleh Tyahnybok of Svoboda, leaders of the three main opposition parties (there are a few more and therein lies one of the problems). On his return, the Commissioner produced this memo:

I conveyed the deep concerns of the EU about the latest developments and underlined the need to end the cycle of violence, to fight against impunity of perpetrators of human rights violations and to continue an inclusive national dialogue to find a way out of the crisis that threatens to further destabilise the country.

Well, that should solve it. More is to come. The egregious and not even very fragrant Cathy Ashton, the EU's High Panjandrum on foreign affairs has been so alarmed by stories that the Ukrainian government is planning a state of emergency that she has pushed her own visit there forward and is going today (Tuesday). No doubt she will know exactly what to say. After all, she managed to put out a statement on the occasion of International Holocaust Memorial Day that somehow did not mention Jews even once. Personally, I think that is stupidity on her and her officials' part but there might be other explanations.

Not her fault

Baroness Ashton was put into the position of the High Panjandrum for the Common Foreign Policy because she was seen to be incompetent enough not to cause any trouble to anybody. She has fulfilled that role admirably while presiding over a huge increase in the personnel of the European External Action Service (EEAS), which has existed for some time but became a separate official body under the Lisbon Treaty and has since grown enormously with 140 EU delegations in various countries.

It seems that the lady can't win. She has been criticized "in a confidential discussion paper signed by the 12 foreign ministers and sent to Ashton last month", to which she has replied in a report on the first year of her ever increasing empire:

Ashton acknowledges problems in the division of roles between the EEAS, launched one year ago this week, and the European Commission. She concedes that there have been serious transitional and structural problems with the EU's 140 delegations abroad. She notes the need to improve policy formulation and delivery, but provides no details as to how she will do so.

Whether her self-defence will satisfy her critics remains to be seen. My suspicion is no and they will have to make a decision on whether they will just put up with expensive incompetence or get somebody who will spend as much money if not more (not that the colleagues care about that) and become rather a nuisance to the various foreign ministers. This is quite interesting, however:

The foreign ministers – including Alain Juppé of France, Guido Westerwelle of Germany, Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland and Carl Bildt of Sweden – said they had “a major interest in a strong and efficient EEAS” and wanted “to help it develop its full potential”. William Hague, Britain's foreign secretary, did not endorse the paper and its implicit criticism of Ashton.

It seems that Radoslaw Sikorski is not quite as eurosceptic as he sometimes tries to make out. Also one would like to know why our own Foreign Secretary refrained from signing the paper. Was it that he did not want to criticize la Ashton; was it that he did not agree with the sentiments expressed in it; or was it that he simply was not aware that this criticism was being put together?