“I don’t know whose plan it is, but it’s not my plan,” said Kallas, who is the top authority inside the EEAS and is responsible for its operations.
Kallas said she had talked to her boss, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and the two “tried to, you know, look into … where is it coming from.”
“The president [has] exchanges with [the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs] and the other members of [the] College all the time,” said the Commission’s chief spokesperson, Paula Pinho, when asked about the conversation.
Von der Leyen has centralized her grip on the European Union’s institutions and policy-making amid a power vacuum due to the weakness of national governments in Germany and France, while keeping a close eye on her newly-installed team.
According to a document first reported by POLITICO, the European Commission is considering cutting the number of people working at many of its embassies dramatically, and instead building out staffing in countries where the bloc has a strategic interest. Some officials worry this could lead to a loss of EU diplomatic heft in Africa and Latin America in particular.
Despite a small increase in the budget for 2025, the cash allocated for the foreign policy arm “leaves us with a significant hole, and we will have to continue with our strict austerity measures,” Kallas acknowledged, although she shied away from agreeing with the EEAS plan to cut people.