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Mai’a K. Davis Cross
European Foreign Affairs Review
Volume 16, Issue 4 (2011) pp. 447 – 464
https://doi.org/10.54648/eerr2011031
Abstract
The recent advent of the European Union (EU) External Action Service (EEAS) represents a major step towards a new kind of diplomacy in the international arena. However, while the construction of such a large, supranational corps of diplomats is wholly unprecedented, the EU's successful track record in its own internal diplomacy contains many lessons for its future external diplomacy. If these lessons are implemented well, the EEAS will be coherent and effective, transforming the EU's foreign policy landscape and catapulting it onto the world stage. If not, this new institution risks becoming a weak bureaucratic experiment that could end up working at cross purposes with the diplomatic apparatus of the Member States already in place. Specifically, this article focuses on the recruitment and training of EU diplomats and the challenges of fostering a strong esprit de corps, sense of collective identity, as well as a high level of professionalism, expertise, and flexibility. The author uses constructivist theory and argues that this approach has much to offer policymakers when it comes to understanding the nature of norms as well as how and why they change.
Extract
The EU’s proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive seeks to enhance responsible business conduct through mandatory risk-based due diligence, administrative supervision by national authorities, and civil liability. If adopted the administrative accountability and remedy scheme envisaged by the proposal will exist alongside another corporate accountability mechanism, the National Contact Points established under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Having two parallel systems will likely result in divergent findings on due diligence as well as remedial responses. Such inconsistency will neither benefit companies trying to understand what is expected and demanded in terms of risk-based due diligence, nor affected people who are victims of business-related societal harm. To avoid that, this article argues that a coordinated system in which NCPs are assigned some of the administrative supervision tasks envisaged by the CSDDD (or similar measures that may be introduced by states, if the CSDDD is not adopted) will serve accountability and legal certainty, including for remedy, better than two distinct systems whose overlapping competences may undermine those objectives.