EEAS appointments trigger mini-reshuffle

Senior management posts to change hands, while development, aid departments are to merge

José Silva Rodríguez, who was until July the European Commission’s director-general for research and development, is to go back to the post of director-general for agriculture and rural development, a job that he held from 1999 to 2005.

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The move was announced yesterday (27 October) as part of a mini-reshuffle of Commission senior management triggered by the appointment of David O’Sullivan, the director-general for trade, to the post of chief operating officer of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s new diplomatic service.

As a preliminary step, O’Sullivan will move to the vacant Commission post of director-general of external relations on 15 November before taking up his EEAS job on 1 December.

Jean-Luc Demarty, a Frenchman who is currently director-general for agriculture, will succeed O’Sullivan as director-general for trade. Silva Rodríguez, 61, will then take over from Demarty as director-general for agriculture, the first instance since the policy of rotating senior managers was introduced of a director-general returning to a job that he had previously held. The French government will be delighted both by a French national securing the top trade job and by an appointment in the agriculture department, suggesting continuity rather than change.

The Commission also approved yesterday the appointment of Gert-Jan Koopman, currently a director in the economic and financial affairs department, as deputy director-general for competition, responsible for state-aid policy. The Dutchman, who was head of cabinet to Neil Kinnock for the last two years of the latter’s time as European commissioner for reform will take up his post on 1 November. There will still be two deputy directors-general posts vacant in the department because Nadia Calviño, the deputy director-general in competition responsible for mergers and antitrust policy, has been appointed deputy director-general of the internal market and services, responsible for financial services – a post left vacant by the departure of David Wright.

Structural reorganisation

As another consequence of the creation of the EEAS, the Commission announced yesterday that it would merge what will remain of its directorate-general for development with the EuropeAid Co-operation Office. Up to now, the former has been responsible for setting development policy and programming, while the latter has, with the EU delegations abroad, implemented the programmes and distributed the money. The new ‘EuropeAid Development and Co-operation Directorate-General’, to be abbreviated to DevCo, will have about 800 staff – around 600 from the current EuropeAid Co-operation Office and around 200 from the development department.

The re-organisation has been prompted by the transfer to the EEAS, scheduled for 1 January, of around 100 officials currently working at the country desks of the directorate-general for development.

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EEAS headquarters

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, has decided that the headquarters of the European External Action Service (EEAS) should be the Capital building on Rond-Point Schuman.

Her spokesperson said that the decision was based on consultations with member states, the European Commission and MEPs, and that the building, owned by the banking and insurance group Axa, was the “most cost-effective” solution for the new service, which is to be launched on 1 December. The EEAS will not pay rent for the first year and the building’s owner will also contribute to the cost of adapting the building to the needs of the EEAS.

The appointments of Pierre Vimont, France’s ambassador to the United States, as secretary-general of the EEAS, and of David O’Sullivan, the Commission’s director-general for trade, as the EEAS’s chief operating officer, were announced by Ashton on Monday (25 October). The two men will start work on 1 December, working from offices on the 12th floor of the Berlaymont building, the Commission’s headquarters, close to Ashton. The service is expected to move into the Capital building by the middle of next year. Ashton, a vice-president of the Commission, will keep her office in the Berlaymont.

The Commission will also create a ‘Foreign Policy Instruments Service’, staffed by Commission officials but housed alongside the EEAS, to manage programmes such as the Instrument for Stability – a crisis-response facility set up in 2007 with a budget of €2 billion up to 2013.