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Britain's top Eurocrat assailed both for doing too much and too little – and for asking for more money
Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, was warned today against usurping the role of the Foreign Office, told to curb the activities and ambitions of Europe's diplomatic service, and criticised for demanding an increase of almost 6% in her budget for next year.
At a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels 18 months after the British peer was made the EU's foreign and security policy head, Lady Ashton came in for criticism from the British, French, Austrians, Dutch, Belgians and Luxembourg.
While private whingeing about her performance has become almost routine in Brussels and other European capitals, the criticism was unusually public, with the government at Westminster for the first time complaining about Britain's most senior official in the EU.
"There's always a lot of criticism thrown at Cathy Ashton," said David Lidington, the minister for Europe. "But we have been able to have frank discussions without bad feeling or suspicion of one another's motives."
He then rounded on Ashton's request for a 5.8% budget increase for her diplomatic machine, the European external action service, describing it as "somewhat ludicrous".
"We need to say to Cathy – we want to see the detailed plans," he said. "It's for her to come up with the detailed workings."
Some of the EU's 136 diplomatic missions around the world were seeking to usurp the functions and powers of national foreign ministries, and assuming the right to speak for EU member states, Lidington argued. The foreign secretary, William Hague, "has sent out instructions all around the world to be aware of competence creep".
Ashton said she did not know "which particular aspect" Hague was concerned about and defended her budget demand which exceeds the overall 4.9% rise that the European commission is seeking. "The money I had last year doesn't cover the costs for next year," she said.
While Lidington complained that Ashton and her service were trying to do too much, other EU states criticised her for doing too little, too late.
Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister, urged Ashton to be "more reactive" and to issue statements in an international emergency without waiting for the consent of the 27 foreign ministries.
Michael Spindelegger, Austria's foreign minister and vice-chancellor, said of the external action service: "We're not satisfied with everything. It is not functioning optimally."
Belgium's foreign minister recently criticised Ashton in public. Senior Dutch diplomats are also increasingly critical.
An Austrian analysis prepared for the "stocktaking exercise" on Ashton's diplomatic service said the EU missions abroad were purging diplomatic cables of sensitive content before passing the doctored reports on to European governments.
Ashton's post combines the roles of vice-president of the European commission with high representative for foreign and security policy. Her diplomatic service is a hybrid, mixing thousands of commission officials with diplomats from the member states.
Senior diplomats in Brussels privately speak of "chaotic organisation", with a war of attrition being waged in the EU embassies abroad between heads of delegation or ambassadors and their staff who refuse to follow orders or speak to one another.
Ashton, who returned to Brussels on Sunday from her first visit to Libya, told the meeting, according to diplomats present, that she was "more popular in Benghazi than in Britain".
Lidington said the less Ashton tried to accomplish, the more successful she would be. "There is pressure from parts of the EU machine to push competence. We push back. If it's overambitious, it actually can achieve a lot less."
Other EU governments increasingly fear that Ashton is part of a British plot to minimise and subvert common European foreign policymaking.