Borrell: EU Commission overstepping its powers in foreign policy and defence

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‘A mess’: EU Commission accused of overstepping on foreign policy

Former top EU diplomat Josep Borrell tells POLITICO that the EEAS must take the lead on diplomacy and defense.

By JACOPO BARIGAZZI

in Brussels

Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO

Former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has delivered his sharpest public criticism yet of the European Commission’s growing role in diplomacy and defense, arguing that it is straying beyond its treaty powers and creating confusion over who speaks for Europe on the world stage.

In an interview with POLITICO, Borrell said the increasingly overlapping roles of the Commission and the European External Action Service, the EU’s diplomatic arm, which he led from 2019 until late 2024, have created “quite a mess” within the bloc’s foreign policy machinery. “The Commission doesn’t speak representing the European Union; the Commission represents only the Commission,” Borrell said.

The comments amount to the clearest public rebuke yet from a former EU top diplomat of a long-running institutional struggle that has simmered under Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. While current and former officials have privately complained that the Commission has steadily expanded its diplomatic footprint, Borrell is the first former high representative to argue so directly that the EU’s executive branch, the guardian of the treaties, has actually crossed the line laid down in EU law.

A veteran politician whose career included stints as Spain’s foreign minister and president of the European Parliament, Borrell preceded Kaja Kallas as head of the EEAS. Like Kallas, he also clashed with von der Leyen.

Borrell has rarely shied away from strong opinions. He has often been an outspoken critic of Israel , accusing it of genocide and “carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”

The Commission’s outreach to Israel continues to anger Borrell. He pointed to the example of Mediterranean Commissioner Dubravka Šuica, who last week met Israeli officials just days after Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar cut ties with Kallas over reports that she had compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to apartheid-era South Africa.

Josep Borrell attends an interview in Kyiv on Nov. 11, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

This, Borrell said, shows that the Commission is overreaching and stepping on the EEAS’s toes.

“With which authority a commissioner goes to Israel, to say that the EU and Israel love each other, and agree and celebrate the role of Israel on peace and stability, when at the same time the high representative of the EU for foreign policy is banned by Israel?” he said.

He cited the EU treaty, which states that the Commission “shall ensure the Union’s external representation” but “with the exception of the common foreign and security policy.”

For Borrell, there is a clear distinction between the external dimension of EU policies, which the Commission is in charge of, and EU foreign policy, which is in the hands of national capitals.

“Certainly the Commission has policies that have an external dimension,” he said. “But this is one thing, and another thing is to pretend to set and define the position of the Union in the war against Iran, or on the Israel-Palestine conflict and other Middle East conflicts. This is not external relations. This is external policy … if you want to fix a common foreign policy position, then go to the Council” where the member countries have competence over foreign policy.

Read more in our series on the battle over the EU’s diplomatic service:

Why the EEAS is fighting for its future

Paris and Berlin push to make EU foreign policy great — somehow

Under fire

Borrell was no stranger to criticism while serving as high representative — the formal title of the EU’s top diplomat — including after a controversial visit to Moscow in 2021 , when he failed to push back against Sergey Lavrov when the Russian foreign minister accused EU leaders of lying about the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

And like Kallas, Borrell often had a difficult relationship with von der Leyen. The Spanish Socialist frequently took a critical stance on Israel, while critics accused the German conservative Commission president of being too closely aligned with Tel Aviv.

“It was not easy, but we tried to manage it,” he said.

He recalled how, in 2021, von der Leyen and then-U.S. President Joe Biden launched the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council, a forum for transatlantic coordination on trade and technology.

Ursula von der Leyen and Borrell hold a press conference in Brussels on Sept. 28, 2022. | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

“From the U.S. side it was chaired by the Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken. On the side of the European Union, the high representative was not even a member.”

For Borrell, the same institutional tension is now emerging in defense policy.

“If I were today the high representative and I would be sitting at a table where someone is saying, ‘I am going to build the European Defence Union,’ then I would feel a little bit uncomfortable,” he said.

That’s because, in his view, the Commission is also overstepping its role on defense, which, like foreign affairs, is a competence of the member countries.

In 2024, von der Leyen appointed the first-ever defense commissioner, former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius. In her mission letter, she tasked him with building a European Defence Union.

This is further evidence that the Commission “has clearly expanded the will to be the one in charge of foreign and security policy,” Borrell said.

In theory, Kubilius is “only a commissioner for the defense industry,” which is in line with the Commission’s powers over policies such as market regulation. But “apparently that’s not the case,” he said, referring to Kubilius’ mission of setting up a European Defence Union . “This is the task that the treaty gives to the high representative,” he said, pointing out the similarities between a European Defence Union and the Common Security and Defence Policy, the existing EU framework for defense and crisis management.

“If you start building this institutional setting, the conflict is there, it’s unavoidable,” he said, arguing that the system “has to be clarified.”

The right thing to do is that “defense policy is an intergovernmental policy. Because this is reality. The Commission cannot pretend to be a shadow Pentagon.”

The Commission did not respond to a request for comment.