The problems facing Kaja Kallas, head of the External Action Service, increasingly come from within.
Approaching a year in the post, the former Estonian prime minister has struggled to make her mark in Brussels, forced to shift from executive decision-maker in a tiny country to a tiny decision-maker in the EU machine.
Her difficulty navigating the system has raised eyebrows. With her father Siim’s legacy as a former commissioner, Kaja sits near the closest thing Brussels has to political royalty, or an American-style dynasty.
But gone are the collegial, back-channel days her father inhabited. Instead, the younger Kallas finds herself hemmed in by a Commission president determined to dominate the world stage.
On Monday night, Kallas pushed back against Ursula von der Leyen’s plan to create an intelligence “cell” in the Berlaymont, warning it would duplicate existing work, confuse intelligence agencies seeking a Brussels point of contact, and strain already scant resources. The point is, though, few expect she can stop it.
The latest spat between the pair, whose relationship is widely considered strained, comes just after von der Leyen’s decision to kill Kallas’ attempt – first reported in this newsletter – to bring top official Martin Selmayr back into frontline politics in the EEAS.
Selmayr would have given her the political clout she sorely lacks – but von der Leyen's loyalist Magnus Brunner was dispatched to make Italy-based Selmayr an offer he could only refuse.
Kallas inherited an EEAS grappling with deep structural problems: divisions over Gaza, the hiving-off of the Middle East and North Africa file into a new Commission department, and an immediate budget squeeze. She said on Monday that despite “financial constraints" none of the 145 delegations will close but some will be “streamlined” into bare-bones operations.
Written answers from the EEAS to MEPs, seen by Nicoletta, show the service has paused or cancelled some overseas security spending, potentially putting EU staff at risk. Kallas is now looking to pinch money elsewhere, including by casting an eye over the sizeable comms budget of the development arm, DG INTPA, but is already facing resistance.
She has also got to explain why she appears rudderless in Brussels. Kallas allowed Simon Mordue to leave, only to see him join von der Leyen’s Cabinet as a diplomat adviser, depriving her of another seasoned aide.
Kallas has her own analysis for these frustrations. She told MEPs last night that the EEAS often sets out a geopolitical strategy only for funding to be splashed in the opposite direction by better-endowed parts of the Commission. “We don’t have the tools when it comes to funding,” she said. But appealing to lawmakers – whose role in foreign policy is limited – offers little leverage.
At root, the constraints are structural. The EEAS higher-ups see themselves as grand strategists, while national capitals tend to view the service as a technical secretariat – more pawn than player on a geopolitical chessboard they dominate.
“We cannot be expected to uphold Europe’s role in the world with decreasing real resources,” Kallas said. That may well be precisely the point.
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