European Union (Amendment) Bill

For the hon. Gentleman's information, the presidency will not be a permanent post but an agreed post appointed by the 27 countries for a period of two and a half years, subject to a further term, and it will have to be made on the basis of agreement between the member states. It certainly will not be a permanent post, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. The role of the high representative obviously relates to the work on external policy that is currently done by the External Relations Commissioner, whose role will be abolished. It is therefore important to recognise the way in which it will work. There is currently a division between the aspects of EU external policy that are handled by the European Commission under the so-called Community method, such as aid-trade development, and those that are handled within the common foreign and security policy, such as the diplomatic statements, sanctions and security policy developed in the European Union, including matters that were referred to earlier about the deployment of civilian and military security missions outside the EU. During the preparation of the Select Committee's report, we heard evidence from witnesses, including EU officials, that that division has bedevilled the effectiveness of the EU's external activities. Mr. Solana told us that the link between his high representative job and the Commission was ““loose”” and that the separate nature of Council and Commission decision making"““sometimes creates problems and even contradictions.””" Work on achieving greater co-ordination between the Council and the Commission, for example on energy security, is already under way. In that sense, the Lisbon treaty brings together aspects of the Council and Commission's external relations functions in a single person, which will be more effective and will move things further in the direction in which they have already begun to try to move. The mere fact that there are two posts at the moment makes it very difficult, even if the individuals get on very well personally. That was the case with former Commissioner Chris Patten, who got on very well with Mr. Solana—he told us that. Nevertheless, the institutional division leads to inefficiency and a lack of coherence. The treaty deals with that problem effectively.