Kaja Kallas Scraps New EU Defence Group Amid Member State Opposition
EU High Representative Kaja Kallas has abruptly scrapped plans for a new high-level European defence advisory group following intense pushback from member states, marking a damaging early blow to the EU’s diplomatic service. Unveiled just days earlier at an informal gathering of defence ministers in Ireland, the body was abandoned on the eve of its inaugural Brussels launch. The decision exposes the hard, unyielding limits on Brussels’ ambitions to direct European security policy at a time of profound geopolitical strain.
The proposed panel was intended to gather senior political figures, former military commanders, and industry experts to iron out capability gaps and kickstart sluggish joint procurement schemes. Conceived strictly as an informal advisory setup without formal legal status, the group was scheduled to hold its first working session in Brussels on Monday. Yet invitees received a brief notice on Sunday evening informing them that the meeting was off. National capitals had intervened, citing unacceptable overlap with existing military structures and an overreach into sovereign defence prerogatives.
For Kallas, only weeks into her tenure as the EU’s foreign policy chief, the retreat is an embarrassing early setback. It demonstrates just how fiercely national defence ministries will crush even symbolic centralising moves by the European External Action Service (EEAS)—a surrender that suits an increasingly assertive European Commission just as well.
The view from the national capitals
Resistance to the plan was swift, coordinated, and entirely predictable. Defence ministries across the continent viewed an independent advisory network operating under the diplomatic service not as a helpful sounding board, but as a territory grab disguised as administrative efficiency.
Skeptical capitals, led by major EU powers, complained privately about a complete absence of prior consultation before the initiative was aired in Ireland. Critics argued that establishing an autonomous brain trust under Kallas risked creating administrative chaos, directly undercutting the newly created office of the European Commissioner for Defence, held by Andrius Kubilius. To several national governments, the setup looked like a deliberate political manoeuvre by the diplomatic service to construct a rival strategy unit outside both Commission control and traditional intergovernmental oversight.
This is not mere bureaucratic navel-gazing in the Brussels bubble. While European leaders regularly preach the gospel of security integration on public platforms, national governments maintain an iron grip on force deployments, intelligence gathering, and procurement budgets. Allowing the EU's diplomatic chief to assemble an unmediated panel of military brass was seen as a step towards institutional expansion that national capitals were simply unwilling to tolerate.
The speed of Kallas’s retreat shows how little political capital she currently holds in her new role. It also lays bare a permanent structural defect in the office of the High Representative. While the diplomatic service holds the treaty-based title for coordinating foreign and security policy, it lacks real money, statutory regulatory powers, and executive leverage. Operational control over the tools of European defence has steadily shifted towards the European Commission, where the Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS) commands the actual financial purse strings.
Squeezed between sovereign capitals guarding operational authority and a Commission consolidating industrial policy, the diplomatic service is finding itself boxed in.
The Commission moves in
The cancellation does not happen in an institutional vacuum. It coincides with a concerted, structural push by major member states to rein in the independence of the diplomatic chief altogether.
Late last month, France and Germany circulated a joint proposal aimed at overhauling the architecture of EU external action. The plan envisions placing the High Representative and the EEAS under the direct supervision and hierarchical authority of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Paris and Berlin want to amend the 2010 Council Decision that established the diplomatic corps, explicitly to eliminate what they describe as "institutional cacophony" across Brussels.
Under the Franco-German blueprint, Kallas would be handed a broader, more hands-on portfolio inside the Commission executive. She would gain direct oversight over defence industry policy, international development, and emergency humanitarian relief. But this expanded administrative footprint comes with a significant political catch. In exchange for wider operational duties, von der Leyen would hold the final say on strategic foreign policy decisions. The independent diplomatic corps would effectively be folded into the Commission's central chain of command.
The 2009 Lisbon Treaty deliberately designed the High Representative as a hybrid construct: part Commission Vice-President, part independent diplomat representing the Council of Member States. The design was meant to bridge the gap between supranational execution and intergovernmental consensus.
In reality, that delicate balance has broken down over successive crises. Throughout her first term, von der Leyen built a powerful, centralized executive presidency, expanding her footprint into trade defence, economic security, sanctions policy, and enlargement timelines. Repeated policy divergences between the Commission and the diplomatic service under Kallas's predecessor, Josep Borrell—most visibly on Middle Eastern diplomacy and defence procurement—have convinced Paris and Berlin that the diplomatic service needs to be brought to heel.
Subordinating Kallas streamlines decision-making under the Commission's formidable administrative engine. More importantly for major powers, it ensures that grand strategic priorities remain firmly governed by intergovernmental consensus rather than independent diplomatic initiatives from the EEAS.
An office built on shifting sand
A harsher reality is taking shape across the European quarter in Brussels. The post-Lisbon ideal of an independent diplomatic service forging a single European foreign policy from the centre is quietly being buried.
Power is concentrating at two distinct, competing poles: the Commission, which commands the budget and the regulatory machinery, and national capitals, which hold the troops, the vetoes, and the sovereign authority. Lacking both financial muscle and constitutional weight, the EEAS risks becoming an institutional bystander in the very policy domains it was created to lead.
The irony of this power struggle is striking. A coalition of eleven member states—including Germany, France, Spain, and Sweden—is currently pushing to reform voting mechanisms in foreign policy, advocating for qualified majority voting (QMV) to prevent individual member states from using single-country vetoes to paralyse action. Yet, as the sudden collapse of Kallas’s advisory group demonstrates, enthusiasm for streamlining decision-making vanishes the moment an initiative threatens national command structures or defence sovereignty.
Formally altering the legal baseline of the EEAS will require unanimous consent from all member states to amend the 2010 founding decision—a high constitutional bar that guarantees months of ugly, behind-the-scenes turf wars. Smaller member states, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, have historically valued an independent High Representative as an essential buffer against the dominance of major capitals like Paris and Berlin. They fear that absorbing the diplomatic chief into the Commission executive will consolidate power in the hands of a few large states.
Yet political realities are changing the balance of power long before any treaty or Council decision is formally rewritten. By pulling the plug on her defence advisory group before its first meeting, Kallas avoided an open, damaging fight she was bound to lose. But the signal sent to the rest of Europe is unmistakable. In the high-stakes battle over who dictates European defence and foreign policy, the strict boundaries of the High Representative’s authority have been drawn with unforgiving clarity.