BBC News : US moves diplomats out of Europe
I agree with the move. It's a long time I noticed the incoherence of having so many embassies, and often big ones, within Europe.
First of all, the EU is increasingly going toward a united diplomacy and foreign policy. EU citizens have the right to seek refuge in the embassy of any other member-state since 1993. Non-EU citizens get a visa for the EU "Schengen area", not for individual countries anymore. In an EU where all citizens can freely move, live and work across borders, what is the point for member-states to sustain expensive embassies and consulates in other member-states ?
I don't see why France should have an embassy and 2 consulates in Brussels and one more in Luxembourg (2h away by car or train), when the French border is 30min away from Brussels (Paris is 1h away by TGV, and some Parisian even commute to work from Brussels) and 10min away from Luxembourg City. Yet they do. But in a country like Japan, 13x bigger than Belgium and remote from everything, France only has one embassy and consulate.
It's only natural that the USA should reduce its staff in Europe. No need to have 25 embassies and even more consulate in a politically united region, when countries like China an India, both bigger and more populous, only have one embassy and a few consulates each.
I therefore suggest that EU countries of the Schengen area shut down their embassies and consulates, or greatly reduce the staff in each other's countries, and redeploy them like the US, in big developing countries. I also think that there should be a big EU-Schengen embassy with many consulates, with service in each official language, rather than many small embassies. This would be more cost-effective and also allow a more effective distribution of consulates in big countries like China, Japan, India, Brazil, the USA or Canada, rather than have a multitude of EU-member-state embassies almost side by side in each capital.
BBC said:
I agree with the move. It's a long time I noticed the incoherence of having so many embassies, and often big ones, within Europe.
First of all, the EU is increasingly going toward a united diplomacy and foreign policy. EU citizens have the right to seek refuge in the embassy of any other member-state since 1993. Non-EU citizens get a visa for the EU "Schengen area", not for individual countries anymore. In an EU where all citizens can freely move, live and work across borders, what is the point for member-states to sustain expensive embassies and consulates in other member-states ?
I don't see why France should have an embassy and 2 consulates in Brussels and one more in Luxembourg (2h away by car or train), when the French border is 30min away from Brussels (Paris is 1h away by TGV, and some Parisian even commute to work from Brussels) and 10min away from Luxembourg City. Yet they do. But in a country like Japan, 13x bigger than Belgium and remote from everything, France only has one embassy and consulate.
It's only natural that the USA should reduce its staff in Europe. No need to have 25 embassies and even more consulate in a politically united region, when countries like China an India, both bigger and more populous, only have one embassy and a few consulates each.
I therefore suggest that EU countries of the Schengen area shut down their embassies and consulates, or greatly reduce the staff in each other's countries, and redeploy them like the US, in big developing countries. I also think that there should be a big EU-Schengen embassy with many consulates, with service in each official language, rather than many small embassies. This would be more cost-effective and also allow a more effective distribution of consulates in big countries like China, Japan, India, Brazil, the USA or Canada, rather than have a multitude of EU-member-state embassies almost side by side in each capital.