Javier Solana

The Europeans also worked with us on the roadmap.

Javier Solana was the external relations commissioner at the time.

And

we managed to come up with a plan that involved three stages.

But she was highly charismatic.

She had been the candidate before and made my predecessor's life pretty miserable.

And they wanted somebody high profile to be the candidate.

So I was persuaded to stand in the by-election, which is what I did.

So it began to look as if NATO was having some difficulties then during that conflict, albeit it was successful.

and a lot of people wanted a reform to take place.

My predecessor, Javier Solana, was leaving.

He was the Secretary General, and he was going to go to the European Union to be the High Representative in foreign policy.

So let's start with your early years as an EU official.

After 18 years as a Spanish diplomat, in 2003, you started to work for Javier Solana, who was the first EU high representative for the common foreign and security policy.

So what was Solana able to do as high rep that the EU had not been able to do before?

Well, Solana provided permission continuity in representing externally the voice of the European Union, particularly as regards what we call common foreign and security policy, or the foreign affairs part of things.

Because at the time, we still had rotating presidencies of the Council that were responsible for the representation of the European Union, which means that the person that chaired the Foreign Affairs Council and that visited different countries to represent the European Union during each period, was the minister of foreign affairs of the country that had the rotating presidency, and at higher level, heads of state or government of the country that was having the rotating presidency.

But this meant that every six months there was someone new.

You know, the famous Kissinger quote, whom to call.

And if you're changing every six months, it's a bit more difficult to build a relationship that is necessary to pursue clarity of foreign policy line and the representation.