Whither European diplomacy? Long-term trends and the impact of the Lisbon Treaty

DOI10.1177/00108367211000791
Date01 March 2022
AuthorFederica Bicchi,Daniel Schade
Published date01 March 2022
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367211000791
Cooperation and Conflict
2022, Vol. 57(1) 3 –24
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367211000791
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Whither European diplomacy?
Long-term trends and the
impact of the Lisbon Treaty
Federica Bicchi and Daniel Schade
Abstract
The article analyses the evolution of European diplomacy over two decades, to assess the
impact of the European External Action Service (EEAS) creation alongside consecutive waves
of enlargement. Data is drawn from two original datasets about European Union (EU) member
states’ diplomatic representations within the EU and across the globe. It shows that member
states have maintained and strengthened their substantial diplomatic footprint across the EU’s
territory, expanding it to include new members and making Brussels a diplomatic hub also for
non-member countries. In parallel, and despite the establishment of the EEAS, member states
have maintained and even increased their networks of diplomatic representations across the
globe, alongside more numerous and more politically active EU Delegations (EUDs). At the
same time, member states have been reducing their diplomats’ numbers, as the cases of Austria,
France, Germany and Italy show. This delicate balancing act has been made possible not only by
contemporary technological developments, but also by European cooperation, as in the case
of EUDs hosting member states’ representations in non-member countries, a development
referred to as co-location. Therefore, whereas the continued presence of national embassies on
the ground could be interpreted as detracting from the EEAS, the existence of EUDs contributes
also to other, more indirect but certainly novel, forms of diplomatic cooperation under a single
European roof.
Keywords
Brusselisation, diplomacy, diplomatic networks, embassies, European Union, member states
Introduction
This article analyses the evolution of European diplomacy, and more particularly of the
European Union’s (EU) and its member states’ networks of diplomatic representations
during the last two decades, marked by profound changes. The aim is to assess how
Corresponding author:
Federica Bicchi, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: f.c.bicchi@lse.ac.uk
1000791CAC0010.1177/00108367211000791Cooperation and ConflictBicchi and Schade
research-article2021
Article
4 Cooperation and Conflict 57(1)
member states have deployed their diplomats in a changing European and global context,
by considering the reach and depth of their diplomatic networks, and their evolution
across time, in comparison to the increasing diplomatic network of the EU.
The Treaty of Lisbon and the creation of the European External Action Service
(EEAS) radically altered the set-up of the EU’s foreign affairs system, not only in
Brussels but also beyond EU borders with the establishment of EU Delegations (EUDs).
This occurred as the EU nearly doubled its membership, with the 2004, 2007 and 2013
enlargements. These developments have been analysed from a number of perspectives,
ranging from EU foreign affairs more generally (see for instance Costa, 2019; Missiroli,
2010; Smith, 2013) to the EEAS (Balfour et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2016) to specific
examples of diplomatic cooperation on the ground in third countries (Baltag and Smith,
2015; Bicchi and Maurer, 2018; Maurer and Raik, 2018). Much less has been written on
the evolution of EU member states’ diplomatic networks in parallel to and because of the
EU’s enlargement and the set-up of the EEAS and EUDs. While the analytical focus
in the literature has tended to privilege an EU-centric approach, this article aims to com-
plement this with an analysis of how member states’ national diplomacies have changed
alongside the EU, both within the EU territory and across the globe. To what extent (and
in what ways) have changes within the EU foreign policy structure been reflected in
changes to member states’ national diplomatic networks, across Europe and beyond?
How has European diplomacy as a whole evolved over the last 20 years and what does
that suggest in relation to future developments?
The purpose here is to trace the evolution of European diplomatic networks within the
EU and beyond the EU borders, in order to show how the macro-picture has changed
during two decades of turbulent times. The article focuses on data generation and explor-
atory analysis, rather than hypotheses confirmation. Identifying specific causal mecha-
nisms will be the next step and requires in-depth interviewing and further qualitative and
quantitative analysis. Rather, the aim here is to identify the main quantitative dimension
of European diplomatic networks, namely the number of European representations
(member states’ embassies and EUDs), and assess its variation across time, while pro-
posing a number of plausible explanations. To that effect, we examine diplomats’ num-
bers and budget for four countries (Austria, France, Germany and Italy). We thus aim to
build on similar analyses of the past (Balfour et al., 2015; Manners and Whitman, 2000)
and to systematise the data on which they relied. Once set alongside the academic debate
and the establishment of the EEAS, the evolution in these figures shows a number of
important patterns for current debates about the future of diplomacy, the EU and interna-
tional politics more generally, as we are going to explore.
In this article, we define a diplomatic network as the set of diplomatic representations
maintained by a member state or by the EU across the globe.1 The data presented here
pertains to bilateral relations only, between each actor and the hosting country,2 and comes
from two original datasets on diplomatic representations of EU current and prospective
member states, as well as of the EC/EU. The first dataset includes data on diplomatic
representations within the EU territory from the Diplometrics dataset,3 updated using
Europa World Factbook data. It focuses on representation within the EU, outlining diplo-
matic networks for 2001, 2009 and 2018.4 The second dataset is devoted to representation
outside the EU and uses data derived from EEAS documents, supplemented with data

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