STA, 5 May 2019 - One of the ways for small EU countries to wield influence in Brussels is to have enough staff at their permanent representations in Brussels, a survey by Danish think-tank Europa has shown. Slovenia's is the second smallest.
The think-tank ranked member states' permanent representations in Brussels according to their size relative to their population, how many of their diplomats are sent there from the national administrations and how long these diplomats stay in Brussels.
"We find that on these parameters, countries like Ireland and Finland appear overall in a better position to fight for their national interest than countries like Denmark or Latvia," say the authors of the study.
The two smallest representations belong to Latvia and Slovenia, which have populations of about two million each and, 69 and 70 staff, respectively. Cyprus with a population of 0.9 million, has 78 staff.
Slovenia and Latvia are also among the nine countries which have a smaller representation than their population rank would suggest, along with Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the UK.
The analysis was conducted between January and March this year, based an email enquiry about the size and status of staff among all 28 permanent representations, and phone interviews. The authors received complete replies from 18 member states: including Slovenia.
The report notes the presidency factor, considering that the countries holding, or about to hold, the EU presidency beef up their permanent representative offices, like in the case of Romania, which is holding the presidency at the moment, or Finland, which is due to take over afterwards.
The largest EU nations, Germany and France also have the biggest permanent representations in Brussels, with 200 and 190 staff, respectively.
The survey finds that there is no apparent relationship between country affluence and the size of its permanent representation, as two of the EU's richest member states, Luxembourg and Denmark, are both in the lower end of the spectrum.
Six countries have larger permanent representations than their population size would suggest: Austria, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, and Luxembourg.
Slovenia has the largest share of its staff composed of home ministry officials, as opposed to locally-employed staff, with a secondment ratio of 99%. Slovenia, along with the Czech Republic, also has longer than average duration of secondment, at 4.5 years, which compares to four years typical for most countries.
