France, Germany and other European Union member states are weighing a sweeping overhaul of the bloc’s dysfunctional diplomatic service, in what amounts to a brutal admission that Kaja Kallas and the European External Action Service have failed to give the bloc a credible foreign-policy voice.

The discussions, reported on originally by the Financial Times, could become the most serious challenge yet to the 15-year-old European External Action Service, known as the EEAS. The EU body burns through roughly €1 billion a year and manages more than 140 EU delegations worldwide.

According to senior officials familiar with the talks, several European capitals are considering proposals that would strip powers from the EU’s top diplomat. Key responsibilities could be moved away from the EEAS and handed back to the European Commission and member states.

If it happens it would represent a major vote of no confidence in one of Brussels’ central foreign policy experiments.

The EU created the EEAS to make the bloc look like a serious geopolitical actor. Fifteen years later, member states are asking whether the service has become an expensive monument to Brussels dysfunction.

“It is clear that the EEAS is not working as it should in the modern world,” one official told the Financial Times. “It is not functioning properly. The problem is structural, so the structure needs to be rebuilt.”

That statement is devastating because it comes from inside the system, confirming what critics have long argued, namely that the EU’s diplomatic machine is structurally confused, strategically weak, and badly suited to a world of war, energy pressure, tariffs, hard power, and great-power rivalry.

Europe is facing Russia’s war in Ukraine, a widening conflict involving Iran, an economic downturn, and energy insecurity, among other things. Yet Brussels’ answer has too often been process, meetings, overlapping mandates, and self-important communiqués.

Officials have questioned whether the EEAS can coordinate effective responses to major crises. That criticism cuts directly at the purpose of the service, which was supposed to help the EU act externally with coherence and speed.

Instead, the bloc often speaks through a chaotic mix of national capitals, Commission officials, Council structures, EEAS diplomats, and political personalities fighting for influence.

One proposal reportedly backed by Paris would limit the autonomy of the EU’s foreign policy chief. Kallas currently occupies an awkward hybrid position, answering both to member states and to the European Commission.

That arrangement has always been messy. Under Kallas, critics now appear to believe it has become intolerable.

The French plan would weaken Kallas’ control over the EEAS’ global network of more than 140 delegations. In practice, that would reduce her ability to operate as the EU’s foreign-policy face and would return more control to capitals and other EU institutions.

“Capitals are frustrated and want us to have an effective way of acting externally with one voice,” another official told the Financial Times. “There is a real risk that the EEAS could fall apart.”

Several countries have privately complained that the EEAS overlaps too much with national foreign ministries and with the foreign-affairs branches of the Commission and Council. Put more simply, too many institutions are trying to do the same job while nobody actually produces a decisive strategy.

The criticism of Kallas is especially damaging. According to the report, some officials believe she has expressed personal views on sensitive issues such as EU-China relations and pushed proposals before member states had approved them.

If those claims are accurate, they expose a basic democratic problem. The EU’s top diplomat is meant to coordinate the agreed position of sovereign states, not behave like the independent foreign minister of a country that does not exist.

A spokesperson for Kallas told the Financial Times that she remains “fully focused on delivering her mandate.” The spokesperson added that “EU foreign policy is strongest when member states are united.”

The reforms could reportedly be carried out without changing EU treaties. Those treaties say the EEAS should “assist” the bloc’s top diplomat under arrangements agreed by member states in 2010.

Any changes, nevertheless, would still require unanimous approval from all 27 EU countries.

The crisis is also part of a wider turf war inside Brussels. The Financial Times reported that the EEAS and the European Commission, led by Ursula von der Leyen, have been competing for influence over foreign and security policy.

Von der Leyen has steadily expanded her role beyond the Commission’s traditional remit, especially on Ukraine. She has often acted as the EU’s dominant political voice abroad, leaving the EEAS looking increasingly redundant.

She has also considered creating an intelligence-sharing unit similar to one that already exists inside the EEAS. Kallas has opposed the idea, according to the report.

That dispute captures the absurdity of Brussels foreign policy. Europe faces war and strategic instability, while its institutions fight over which bureaucratic branch gets to own which file.

Two officials said the reform proposals are being considered as part of a new security strategy the Commission is expected to publish this summer. That strategy could become the vehicle for cutting the EEAS down to size.

Stefan Lehne, a former EU official and senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, said the EU’s foreign-policy record has fallen short. “If you look at the development of EU foreign policy over the past five years, it is quite clear that the results have not been positive,” he told the Financial Times.

Lehne said Europe must adapt to a worsening strategic environment. “There is a need to respond to the negative environment all around, and institutional change is one way to do this,” he said. “It would be strange not to adjust the instruments and structure to the new reality that the EU faces today.” That is the diplomatic way of saying the existing model has failed.

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