Given the increasing importance of foreign policy in the European Union (EU), it is surprising that the genuinely European foreign policy elites – the ‘Eurodiplomats’ leading the European External Action Service (EEAS) and EU Delegations abroad – have remained largely understudied. To address this gap, this article conducts a prosopography – or ‘collective biography’ – of eighty-five lead Eurodiplomats. The resulting cartography offers a first comprehensive insight into these EU-level foreign policy elites’ key sociographic, geographical, educational and professional career-related data at the end of High Representative Borrell’s terms in office. It reveals the co-existence of four sub-groups within the corps of Eurodiplomats, whose main distinguishing features are their professional parcours and – to some extent – gender, age and educational backgrounds. Compared to other lead figures on the broader ‘field of Eurocracy’, top Eurodiplomats are even more generalist regarding their educational and professional parcours, with about half of them being newcomers to the EU upon joining the EEAS. Academically, these findings lay the foundations for a theory-informed research agenda on the Eurodiplomats and their propensity for developing an esprit de corps. Normatively, the insights bring into focus the body’s recruitment practices and whether they yield the type of staff that appropriately represents EU diversity.
European Foreign Affairs Review