Bulgarian Commissioner Georgieva to Act as Ashton's Deputy

Kristalina Georgieva, the Bulgarian commissioner for humanitarian aid. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Kristalina Georgieva, the Bulgarian commissioner for humanitarian aid, will be one of three EU commissioners, who will act as deputies of Catherine Ashton, the EU's recently-appointed foreign policy chief.

Ashton will be replaced either by the EU commissioners for enlargement, development or humanitarian aid or by the foreign affairs minister of the country holding the EU presidency for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) issues.

This became clear after the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee approved recommendations on the organisation and working methods of the European External Action Service (EEAS), set out in a text by Elmar Brok.

The decision makes it possible for the European External Action Service (EEAS) to become official after the summer recess and to start recruiting in autumn.

Under the most optimistic scenario, the European Parliament could have given its final blessing to the EEAS at its current plenary session, which ends on Thursday. However, as leading MEPs explained, more time proved to be needed for the political groups to digest the Madrid compromise.

The EEAS will have its headquarters in Brussels and will be made up of a central administration and the 136 former Commission delegations.

The central administration will be organised in directorates-general comprising geographic desks covering all countries and regions of the world, as well as multilateral desks.

On 1 January 2011, a total of 1,525 civil servants from the Commission and the Council's General Secretariat will be transferred to the EEAS.

At least 60% of EEAS staff will be made up of permanent EU officials.

Officials from national diplomatic services - to constitute one third of the staff when the service has reached its full capacity - will be temporary agents for up a duration of up to eight years with a possible extension of two years.

Recruitment will be "based on merit whilst ensuring adequate geographical and gender balance", says Brok's report. Measures to correct possible "imbalances" could be taken during the 2013 review of the service. These measures would analogous to the ones taken when new Member States joined the EU in 2004.

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