EU Delegations Between Consistency and Pragmatism : A Study on the Political Role of EU Delegations in the Middle East and North Africa

Sammanfattning: It is more than a decade since the Lisbon Treaty entered into force, and the European External Action Service (EEAS) was founded to unify the EU's foreign policy and make it more coherent and consistent. With the creation of the EEAS, the Commission delegations were transformed into EU delegations, and the delegations started to represent the whole EU abroad politically. The Lisbon Treaty clearly strengthened the EU foreign policy and arguably gave the EU a common voice in the world. However, the speed at which the transformation took, and takes place, is not the same in all third (non-EU) countries where the EU is present. Many scholars argue that there is still a lack of consistency in EU foreign policy, and some aspects of EU external action after Lisbon are still understudied, such as EU external action in specific regions. Against this backdrop, and within a theoretical framework of Frauke Austermann’s theory of a European diplomatic service of “different speeds,” this thesis examines the consistency of the political role between EU delegations in selected Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries in an attempt to answer the following research question: How consistent is the political role between EU delegations in the MENA region twelve years after the founding of the EEAS and the political sections of the delegations? This is done by conducting and analysing semi-structured interviews with diplomats working in the political sections of fourteen of the sixteen EU delegations in the region. With the help of a qualitative content analysis method, the consistency of the political role is examined by investigating the function of the political sections, their main tasks within the respective delegations and their relations and interaction with headquarters in Brussels, EU member states’ (EUMS) foreign missions and host country authorities. The findings of this thesis show that a few observations of the interviewees could put the consistency of the political role into question. The main issues concerned malfunctioning cooperation between the sections of the delegations, the influence of specific EUMSs on the work of the delegations and the poor staffing (although this was a rather consistent issue). Yet, for the most part, based on the aspects studied in this thesis, the political role proved to be very consistent between the delegations of the region.