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Member states are considering taking the EU Parliament to court if it does not back down on demands for new powers on EU foreign policy and international agreements, EUobserver has learnt. Ambassadors representing member states at a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday (13 October) signaled their discontent over an inter-institutional agreement between the European Commission and the EU legislature which may give fresh powers to euro-deputies, especially when it comes to international negotiations on behalf of the EU.

The draft report, according to an analysis by the council of ministers' legal services, could lead to a stand-off between EU institutions if adopted as such next week in Strasbourg. "The court option is not off the table," one EU source said. Ambassadors will come back to the matter in their meeting next Wednesday, following the MEP's vote in the plenary. The crux of the matter is to what extent MEPs can be part of EU delegations to multilateral and bilateral meetings and negotiations with other countries. According to the draft, the Parliament wants to have its representatives guaranteed participation in all multilateral, but also bilateral agreements "of particular political importance" - for instance on trade or fisheries.

The birth of the European External Action Service, one of the most anticipated innovations of the Lisbon Treaty, will be a difficult one, admitted a top European Commission official yesterday (4 March).

Implicitly, he appeared to confirm that the blueprint, already drafted by Ashton's committee, was encountering difficulties in some member countries. A "long discussion" had taken place at the level of EU member-state ambassadors (Coreper) yesterday, he said, and talks were due to continue at the informal foreign ministers' meeting in Cordoba, Spain, tomorrow (5 March). The European Parliament will also have a say, he added. But recruiting staff from the member countries will take time, Vale de Almeida said, adding that upgrading the European Commission's existing network of foreign delegations will also take "a few months". Speaking to EurActiv, Vale de Almeida said that if the decision was taken by the end of April as planned, he expected the service to start work by the end of the year.

Abstract: The European Union finally succeeded in ramming through introduction of the Lisbon Treaty in December 2009. The treaty was touted by the powers in Brussels as the vehicle that would create the long-awaited "single phone line" to Europe. Lisbon was to streamline the gargantuan EU bureaucracy and make communication between the two sides of the Atlantic smooth and tidy. Instead, the mess is worse than before, with five EU "presidents" tripping over each other and confusing Washington with ill-defined, overlapping, and flat-out confusing roles and foreign policy objectives. The Lisbon Treaty essentially allows the EU a foreign policy power-grab, the driving force of which is the notion that the countries of Europe will be stronger collectively than they are separately. But sovereignty cannot be traded for influence, and the EU's attempts to do so could threaten the security of Europe-- and of the United States.

The treaty, which aims to make decision-making smoother, creates a long-term president and enhances the powers of the EU foreign policy chief, is intended to give the 27-country bloc more political clout to match its economic weight.

The Lisbon Treaty changes the rules on how decisions are reached by the EU because decision-making has become unwieldy since the accession of 10 countries, mostly from eastern and central Europe, in 2004 and two more in 2007. It hands more power to the European Parliament, which shares some legislative responsibilities with the European Commission - the EU executive and a powerful regulatory body. Member states' leaders retain a lot of power.

The European Union is just months away from launching a new unified diplomatic service. But any hopes that the new structure will bring greater focus and effectiveness to the bloc's foreign policy are probably premature, analysts say.The European External Action Service (EEAS), whose creation was a key provision of last year's Lisbon Treaty, is expected to be fully operational on January 1. It eventually will be staffed with thousands of diplomats in Brussels and in EU missions around the world.

But while the new diplomatic corps may change the way the EU executes its foreign policy, it will not change the way the bloc's foreign policy is formulated. Foreign affairs within the bloc, observers say, will remain very much the prerogative of member states' national governments.

The EU's new foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, will take up her duties next week, in a continuation of the political whirlwind which saw her suddenly propelled from her short stint as trade commissioner to taking on what will be one of the union's most high profile jobs.

Ms Ashton, whose meteoric ascent has come as a surprise even to her, will have to hit the ground running. She is set to attend an EU-Ukraine summit on 4 December. The first EU foreign ministers' meeting, which she is supposed to chair under the new rules, will take place on 7 December. It will also fall to her to oversee the setting up the EU's external action service, a thousands-strong diplomatic outfit that one EU official described as the greatest-ever change to the commission's bureaucracy. Her 1 December start opens up other questions, such as what will happen to the trade portfolio which she will vacate and what will be the role of Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the current EU external relations commissioner. Ms Ashton's new job merges the external relations commissioner post with that of the high representative for foreign policy, currently held by Javier Solana, for the first time putting foreign policy clout together with the financial means to implement it into the hands of one person.

Two senior MEPs have indicated that the European Parliament will leverage its legal powers to make sure Catherine Ashton gets the "right balance" of top people in the diplomatic corps. Ms Ashton, the EU foreign relations chief, is getting ready to unveil her nominations for 31 heads of mission and deputy heads of mission for EU embassies abroad, as well as a further 80 senior diplomatic postings and the top 20-or-so administrative jobs in the European External Action Service (EEAS).

A parliament negotiator on the EEAS regulations, German centre-right MEP Elmar Brok, told EUobserver that another big chunk should go to European Commission candidates so that the EEAS becomes a genuine EU body instead of an inter-governmental one. "There needs to be a proper institutional balance. If all the posts come from the member states and the Council, then we will have a problem," he warned. He added that parliament aims to call around 10 out of the top diplomatic nominations for hearings: "If someone goes before the European Parliament and it is a total disaster, then it will be difficult for Ms Ashton to keep them."

The European Parliament on Wednesday (20 October) adopted by a crushing majority new budgetary and staff regulations for the European External Action Service (EEAS), clearing the last legal hurdle for the launch of the new institution. "It's a historic vote. We're all one happy family now," an official in the entourage of EEAS chief Catherine Ashton told EUobserver.

Ms Ashton is also close to a compromise with the parliament's foreign affairs committee on hearings for new EEAS ambassadors. The diplomats are likely to face parliament questions in early December, after receiving full accreditation from their host countries. Ms Ashton wants the hearings to be held for the most part behind closed doors. Following the vote on Wednesday, the foreign affairs MEPs have little leverage to use against her. Details of the parliament vote on three separate EEAS reports saw the compromise deal get through by over 500 votes in each case against no more than 51. The budget-and-staff package envisages detailed parliamentary oversight on EEAS hiring and firing of diplomats in foreign missions but not on EU member states' spending of the €3-billion-a-year European Development Fund or on military missions. It stipulates an "appropriate and meaningful presence of nationals from all the member states" but not quota-type targets for nationals from new EU countries, as called for by Polish centre-right MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, who tried to put a positive spin on developments in an emailed statement on the day.

Far from injecting new impetus into the European Union's foreign policy, the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force on December 1, is likely to further sap its effectiveness.As a result of the treaty's coming into effect, the institutional underpinnings and basic assumptions of EU foreign policy now require adjustment in a manner that will diminish the importance of its communal (also described, variously, as the supranational, federalist, or integrationist) element.