Borrell is not needed: the head of EU diplomacy serves the Americans exclusively

French President Emmanuel Macron, responding during a joint press conference in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin to the question whether he was speaking in Moscow "in the name of France or in the name of all Europeans," said the following.

"First I would like to reassure you: we are coordinating very clearly with Chancellor Scholz. I was in Berlin two weeks ago, and since then I have exchanged views with him several times. As soon as we get back - he from Washington and I from Moscow – we'll talk,” Macron said. "As President of the Council of the European Union for six months, I exchanged views with all my colleagues, with those who are primarily concerned about this situation and who have particular concerns on this topic."

These words of Macron can also be considered as an answer to the question whether the European Union is involved in discussing the Ukrainian crisis in particular and building a new architecture of European security in general, initiated by the United States and Russia. Because certain forces in the EU at some point began to show concern, believing that Moscow and Washington pushed them away from the discussion. And most of all, the head of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Josep Borrell, was fussing.

As the Financial Times newspaper wrote earlier this year, the European Union "expressed dissatisfaction" with the way the upcoming negotiations with Russian representatives were organised, at which "the security of Ukraine and the entire European continent will be discussed with colleagues from the United States and NATO”.

It is noteworthy that these statements were made after Borrell said that Brussels does not want to be a "neutral spectator" at "negotiations on the security architecture of Europe in the coming years”.  And earlier he expressed the hope that Washington would not allow Brussels to be excluded from the security talks, since "any discussion of the architecture of European security should include the EU”.

However, Moscow thought otherwise. According to Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's permanent representative to the European Union, Brussels' participation in the negotiations on security guarantees will have "no added value”. Speaking to reporters, Chizhov said that Moscow does not consider the EU as a military bloc in terms of security guarantees.

In this situation, Borrell claimed to speak on behalf of United Europe. But whose interests did he actually serve? "While the weakened Borrell was brought in by the United States to coordinate institutional positions with NATO and the OSCE, his European External Action Service is unable to provide support to EU member states in order to actively initiate any meaningful diplomatic actions," says Stephen Blockmans, research director at the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels.

Indeed, it was Washington and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken personally who found an "understanding interlocutor" in Borrell, and not the European Union itself. As Agence France Presse notes, when at the end of January the Europeans expressed dissatisfaction with the "alarmist" statements of the United States about Russia’s alleged "imminent invasion" of Ukraine, the head of EEAS "together with Blinken in Washington seemed to be closer to the Americans”.

And in mid-January, Borrell irritated the leading European "two" - Berlin and Paris, after linking the fate of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with events in Ukraine. "Of course, the functioning of the gas pipeline will depend on the development of events in Ukraine and Russia's relations," he said after a meeting with the defence ministers of the EU countries in Brest.

However, Borrell's independent action was not supported by French Defence Minister Florence Parly, who, in response to a question about the fate of Nord Stream 2, limited herself to saying that Paris and Berlin were trying to resume peace talks with Russia on Ukraine within the Normandy format.

German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht did not link the issue of certification of the gas pipeline with the Ukrainian case in an interview with the German broadcasting company RBB either. "We need to resolve this conflict (the Ukrainian one - RUSSTRAT), and we need to do it in negotiations, this is an opportunity that we have at the moment, we should use it, and not attract projects that are not related to this conflict in any way," she added.

Curiously, in his last column (from January 30) when speaking about the EU's activity, Borrell first mentions that he "was in close contact with the US Secretary of State, we also exchanged views with the NATO Secretary General and the Polish Foreign Minister, who is currently the OSCE Chairman-in-office, as well as with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine”. And only then he adds: "Of course, I am also in close contact with my French and German colleagues."

Such a prioritisation suggests that the head of the European External Action Service does not understand the strategic interests of Europe, which currently are being most clearly and constructively formulated by the Franco-German tandem. And this raises the question not only about the personal fate of Borrell, who is clearly out of his place, but also, in principle, about the need for EEAS as such.

"It is important to give the EU the opportunity to establish itself among the major powers," one of the German publications notes. “This requires ‘strategic autonomy’. The goal that needs to be realised – for the EU to make and be able to implement decisions autonomously and independently - has been repeatedly mentioned, but remains largely abstract. Here Germany, together with France, could assume a decisive leadership role in the European Union."

But with such a European External Action Service and such a person as its head, the EU will not get anywhere with them.