This article was first published on the Online EU Training blog

Now that the political agreement on the new European External Action Service (EEAS) has been made, the question arises: who will this new service have as its staff?

The idea to have 1/3 Commission (mainly RELEX and some related DGs), 1/3 Council (from its Brussels Secretariat) and 1/3 Member States (national diplomats) in the service is interesting. Senior people mention some 1200-1600 starting staff, but it is widely held that the total number of the service staff will go up to as much as 6000 until 2013.

This means the recruitment of some 4000 new EU staff to the EEAS in 3.5 years.

Can this be true? Well, it seems there is a strong political determination to make it happen, and what’s more, the Commission seems to be in favour of an open competition for all these posts (even if a pre-condition may be to already work as a diplomat in one of the EU 27 Member States…we’ll see).

Watch out for the latest news – you may as well be representing the EU in China quite soon…and we will help you make this dream come true 🙂

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