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Politico (30 June 2026)

Jacopo BARIGAZZI and Clea CAULCUTT

The EU’s two most powerful countries want the bloc’s foreign policy wing to change. They just don’t agree on how to do it.

France is pushing for the role of the EU’s top diplomat, currently Kaja Kallas, to be strengthened, according to three officials who spoke to POLITICO. Germany’s view is far less fixed, but some of the country’s officials have floated the opposite: diluting her powers and giving them to the European Commission. 

The debate between Paris, Berlin and Brussels encapsulates the challenges, questions and doubts confronting the European External Action Service that launched in 2011. Among governments and the EU’s most senior officials, there’s a sense that something must change. It’s just not clear what.

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