Kallas gave top EU official the ax and governments aren’t happy

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BRUSSELS ― The European Union’s new foreign affairs chief has outraged governments and officials over her decision to boot out her department’s top civil servant.

As first reported by POLITICO, Italian EU veteran Stefano Sannino is leaving his post as secretary general of the bloc’s External Action Service and moving to a senior role at the European Commission where he started his EU career.

The decision by Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister, has ruffled feathers just a week after the new EU leadership began work. The move has shocked and dismayed people who worked with Sannino in Brussels and in national capitals, according to four EU officials who spoke to POLITICO.

“Several member states were quite irritated about this decision,” one EU diplomat said. “You don’t let the pilot disembark the ship when a new crew has to navigate stormy waters.”

Others said the decision signaled that Kallas ― already one of the most prominent members of the EU’s new top brass ― is prepared to rock the boat and put her own stamp on the institution she will lead for the next five years.

Sannino reaches the retirement age of 65 this month, but the Commission could ask him to stay longer. He had been widely expected to stay on in the EEAS role.

Names in the frame

An urbane, opera-loving former Italian ambassador and senior Commission official, Sannino is a well-known figure in Brussels. As secretary general of the EU’s foreign policy wing, he has an outsized influence on European foreign affairs, shaping everything from the bloc’s Ukraine policy to its relationship with the United States.

But his early exit means a vacancy at the apex of the EEAS. The position has already been advertised with a closing date for applications of Dec. 16.

Some of the names floating in Brussels in recent weeks include French Ambassador Philippe Léglise-Costa and European Commission Secretary General Ilze Juhansone.

Juhansone, a former Latvian ambassador, who is currently the top EU official at the Commission, is a close ally of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her chief of staff Bjoern Seibert.

Should Juhansone clinch the top job at the EEAS it could be seen as a power grab by von der Leyen, who has a highly centralized, top-down management style as Commission boss. But it would also mean that with Kallas, a second person from a Baltic country would play a key role in foreign policy, a prospect that doesn’t sit well with some governments.

Tense relations

Kallas’ position, officially called EU high representative, is notoriously tricky. Although one of the bloc’s 27 commissioners, the EU foreign policy chief sits institutionally somewhere between the Commission and the Council ― which represents the member countries ― and is responsible for the 2,500-plus staff working in EEAS headquarters as well as around 2,800 employees working at delegations across the world.

The decision by Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister, has ruffled feathers just a week after the new EU leadership began work. | Omar Marques/Getty Images
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Kallas is the youngest — and most senior — figure to occupy the position. The 47-year-old was prime minister of Estonia between 2021 and 2024.

Tensions between the Commission and the EEAS have already surfaced, just days into the five-year mandate of the new Commission.

The Commission is pushing plans to dramatically cut the number of people working at many of its embassies to beef up staffing in countries where it feels the bloc has a strategic interest, POLITICO reported last week. The staff reduction initiative come as the EEAS blew past its budget for 2024.

But it also reflects a wish by the Commission to beef up its Global Gateway project, its answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, at the expense of the more traditional diplomacy practiced by the EEAS, which operates 145 delegation offices (de facto EU embassies) across the world.

In a hearing at the European Parliament on Thursday, Kallas said that the plan to cut embassy staff had not been her decision but that she had discussed it with von der Leyen.

“I don’t know whose plan it is, but it’s not my plan,” said Kallas, who was sitting beside Sannino during the hearing.

When asked about finances at the EEAS she said: “When I was prime minister, I had to clear the mess of … previous prime ministers, regarding the budget, I had to answer the questions regarding the budget that I had nothing to do with.”

Eddy Wax contributed to this article

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