Malta has made substantial progress in penetrating the EU’s diplomatic service, doubling its presence over the past year.

Set up in 2010 after the coming into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, the European External Action service (EEAS) represents the EU around the globe.

Although still dominated by employees from the ‘old’ member states with a long tradition of diplomacy, particularly France, Germany and the UK, there are 14 Maltese serving officials.

Five of them occupy ‘important’ positions representing the EU in East Jerusalem, New York, Manila, Geneva and Beirut.

Malta was one of the EU member states lobbying to increase the number of its officials in the service, arguing, along with other ‘small’ member states, that it was under-represented.

Although, unofficially, small member states had asked the commission to set target thresholds on how many officials should be recruited from each of the 27 members, Brussels did not seem to like the idea.

However, sources close to the commission said Malta’s lobbying did have an effect.

“Just before the EEAS was established, there was only one Maltese official working in the EU’s Foreign Service,” a commission official said.

“Now there are already 14 and one of them has an ambassadorial rank,” he noted.

Foreign Minister George Vella told the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs that Malta should continue to increase its participation in the EEAS “because there were many Maltese who were experienced in diplomatic and consular affairs”.

Apart from officials from the EU’s services, the EEAS also recruits officials directly from the diplomatic corps of individual member states.

Three of the 14 Maltese EEAS officials are seconded national experts from the Maltese diplomatic corps.