The legal affairs committee of the European Parliament has approved a report on the staff regulations of the European External Action Service. The rules require the body to ensure meaningful representation for all European Union member states.
The committee, however, discarded a proposal to set recruitment targets that would require the EEAS to hire a specific number of people from new European Union member states, the EUObserver reports.
The proposal requires EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton to give privileged treatment to nationals of new EU member countries over the next 10 years in order to correct the imbalance in the representation of countries in the EU’s existing foreign relations facility. The proposal had earlier won support in the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
The European Parliament will vote in plenary Oct. 20 on the EEAS staff regulations and the budgetary affairs committee’s plans to give the European Parliament greater oversight over EEAS spending.
“The plenary decision is to pave the way for Ms Ashton to launch the EEAS on 1 December as originally planned,” the EUObserver notes.
