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Foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton will turn her attention to choosing the top officials and the main building for the European External Action Service (EEAS) after the EU Parliament approved the legal blueprint for the new body. MEPs in a landslide result in Strasbourg on Thursday (8 July) backed the final EEAS set-up by 549 votes against 78 with 17 abstentions.

The EEAS today boils down to Ms Ashton and a team of 30-or-so officials in one corridor on the 12th floor of the European Commission building in Brussels, struggling to work with EU experts in the commission's Charlemagne building next door, the EU Council building across the road and dozens of other bureaus. From 1 December, she will take command of some 1,500 officials housed under one roof in the heart of the EU quarter in Brussels, as well as 800 EU diplomats in the EEAS' 136 foreign embassies.

In a sign of tension in the Lisbon-Treaty-era EU, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos defended member states' prerogatives in Strasbourg on Tuesday. Mr Fillon reportedly said it is a "red line" for Paris that member states will take foreign policy decisions, while Ms Ashton will simply "implement" them. Mr Moratinos said that in some cases, such as human rights in Cuba, bilateral diplomacy is more effective than EU-level action. For his part, the leader of the Liberal group in the parliament, Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt, on Wednesday attacked the "19th century" mentality of "nation states." "What century are we living in? Terrorism, does that stop at borders? Climate change? Migration?" he said.

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.

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 Union's new ambassador to the United States has presented his credentials to President Barack Obama in Washington, formally assuming his position in the process.  Joao Vale de Almeida formally became the new European Union ambassador to the United States on Tuesday after handing over his credentials to President Barack Obama in Washington. Vale de Almeida is the first EU ambassador to the US since the reforming Lisbon Treaty came into force on December 1, 2009. The Lisbon Treaty aims to enhance the EU's capacity to operate more effectively and act more cohesively in matters of foreign affairs and security. Prior to the Lisbon Treaty, the position of ambassador to the US was held by the rotating EU presidency, which changed hands every six months. Vale de Almeida's duties will include representing the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy. "I'm the first new type of ambassador for the European Union anywhere in the world," Vale de Almeida told news agency Agence France-Presse after the credentials ceremony at the White House. "I'm supposed to have a wider mandate than my predecessors," he said. "Our delegations now cover a wide spectrum of issues well beyond the economic dimension, trade dimension and regulatory dimension, to cover all policies in the union, including foreign policy and security policy."

EU foreign ministers on Monday (26 July) gave the nod to the overall structure of the Union's new diplomatic service, paving the way for chief of diplomacy Catherine Ashton to begin making appointments to the service that will employ thousands.

With the fight to have the service established largely over, the focus is now likely set on the extent to which member states, several of whom jealously guard their foreign policy prerogatives, will allow a coherent foreign policy to thrive.

Big countries have been keen to stress the service will not impinge on their foreign policy sovereignty, a point illustrated by the extent to which they are prepared to consider closing their own embassies in certain countries and use the EU embassy.

Exasperated Turkey slammed its fist on the table this weekend saying Europe is dragging its feet on EU entry talks, while the 27-nation bloc sought to boost ties with a nation whose worldwide weight is on the rise.After sitting down for talks on Saturday with the 27-nation bloc's foreign affairs chiefs, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said: "I expressed our dissatisfaction with the speed of the negotiations, I expressed it clearly."

Since the kickoff of entry talks in 2005, movement has been sluggish, due to the deadlock over Cyprus, the slow pace of reforms in Turkey and, more fundamentally, because France and Germany are wary of seeing the Muslim-majority nation of 75 million join the bloc.

But Ankara can bank on the support of other EU states in its bid to join.Britain, which in July publicly expressed its opposition to France and Germany on the question, this weekend reiterated its willingness to see progress on the entry talks."It would be good to see those talks speed up," said Foreign Secretary William Hague, as with Turkey inside the EU "there is a very powerful combination to have.""It's very important to show some momentum on this and the UK will be trying to make sure that that happens before the end of the year," he said.Sweden's Carl Bildt took an even stronger tack.

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.