(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - "There's no possibility of having a second term and it needs to go to someone else next … In any event, you lay the foundations but there are people who can do things with this that probably I couldn't do, so it'll be good to hand it over", Ashton told the German Marshall Fund on 16 March.
Ashton was appointed as high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the period from 1 December 2009 until the end of the current term of office of the Commission in 2014.
Ashton will be remembered for putting in place the European External Action Service (EEAS). According to the Lisbon Treaty, the EEAS is independent from other institutions, although its head is also Commission vice president.
During her tenure, Ashton, who is a UK Labour Party peer, suffered from bad press, especially from her native Britain, as well as from attacks from European political circles who claimed that she didn’t prioritise correctly her actions and presence to important events.
The EU foreign policy chief faced strong criticism from the start of the job over her lack of experience on foreign policy issues, as well as her level of knowledge or vision.
Ashton was regularly taunted by political opponents over her role as treasurer of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the UK during the early 1980s.
Geoffrey Van Orden, a British Conservative, asked her when she had last visited a military unit, suggesting that this was probably Greenham Common, an air base in Britain where women established a peace camp in the 1980s.
Ashton said that she had not been a member of the CND for 28 or 29 years and that what was relevant in the 1970s was not relevant in 2010. “I have never hidden what I did,” she said. “I have never been ashamed of who I am and what I have done.”
By contrast she defended her support for the invasion of Iraq. “I was a British minister at the time of the war in Iraq,” she said. “I believed it was right based on what we knew at the time.”
Under the Lisbon Treaty, Ashton’s post as foreign policy chief is combined with the post of Vice-President of the European Commission.
Ashton’s political career began in 1999 when she was created a life peer (Baroness Ashton of Upholland) by the then Labour government. Under that government, she became the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills in 2001 and subsequently in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and Ministry of Justice in 2004. She became a Privy Councillor (PC) in May 2006.
Catherine Ashton was appointed Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Queen's Privy Council in Gordon Brown’s first Cabinet in June 2007. As well as Leader of the Lords, she held responsibility in the House of Lords for equalities issues, and she was instrumental in steering the EU's Treaty of Lisbon through the UK's upper chamber. In 2008, she succeeded Peter Mandelson as Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission.
In December 2009, she became the first person to take on the role of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy that was created by the Treaty of Lisbon. As High Representative, Baroness Ashton serves as the EU's foreign policy chief.
Catherine Ashton was born in Upholland, Lancashire on 20 March 1956. She comes from a working class family, with a background in coal mining going back generations. She attended Upholland Grammer School in Billinge Higher End, Lancashire, then Wigan Mining and Technical College in Wigan. Ashton graduated with a BSc in Sociology in 1977 from Bedford College, London (now part of Royal Holloway, University of London). She was the first person in her family to attend University.
Between 1977 and 1983 Ashton worked for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) as an administrator and in 1982 was elected as its national treasurer and subsequently as one of its vice-chairs.
British Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan, rapped Ashton for having "no background in trade issues at a time when the EU is engaged in critical negotiations with Canada, South Korea and the World Trade Organization (WTO)”, when she was picked as EU’s Trade Commissioner.
Ashton's relative obscurity caused considerable comment in the media with The Guardian newspaper reporting that her appointment as High Representative had received a 'cautious welcome as EU foreign minister from international relations experts'.
The Economist described her as being a virtual unknown with paltry political experience, having no foreign-policy background and having never been elected to anything.
On her appointment, the associate editor of The Spectator, Rod Liddle wrote: "Never elected by anyone, anywhere, totally unqualified for almost every job she has done, she has risen to her current position presumably through a combination of down-the-line Stalinist political correctness and the fact that she has the charisma of a caravan site on the Isle of Sheppey."
According to The Guardian, an anonymous Whitehall source remarked: "Cathy just got lucky...The appointment of her and Herman Van Rompuy [as European Council president] was a complete disgrace. They are no more than garden gnomes."
Ashton was also criticized for the fact that she cannot speak any foreign languages.
In February 2010, it emerged that Ashton had been deplored within the EU community for a number of actions, including her failure to visit Haiti in the wake of the earthquake and her lack of leadership abilities during ministerial meetings and policy briefings. Senior officials within her team complained that she speaks only in "generalities". She was also criticized for a lack of commitment to the job, allegedly switching off her phone after 8 pm every day.
In February 2011, Baroness Ashton received the lowest grade in a survey rating the performance of European Commissioners. The survey, carried out by lobbying and PR company Burson-Marsteller, asked 324 Brussels policy-makers to rate the European Commissioners with a grade A to E (A being the highest).
Lady Ashton, a commission vice-president as well as the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, scored an E for her performance. She was the only Commissioner to receive a grade below D. She lives in London with her husband, Peter Kellner, the President of online polling organization, YouGov. She has two children, and three stepchildren.
Intelligence documents show that British domestic intelligence agency MI5 had tagged Kellner and his wife as “communist sympathizers”, because of their anti-apartheid activism and long-term involvement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, considered a “subversive” movement within the intelligence services.
Meanwhile, veteran EU diplomats have warned that the UK’s foreign spying apparatus, ‘MI6’ is administering European foreign policy affairs in absence of an experienced diplomat in charge of the EU foreign policy.
The diplomats are increasingly worried about an inexperienced non-diplomat taking the reins as EU foreign policy chief.
According to the diplomats, MI6 as a historic rival to the EU, was playing a strong role in shaping Baroness Catherine Ashton’s policies as the head of EU foreign policy.
The inexperienced Ashton also faces fierce criticism for serving in unrelated posts such as the head of National Council for Single Parent Families, the chief of National Documents Organization, Trade Institute Management, and parliamentary deputy to two unrelated ministries in Britain.
Ashton, in her sole diplomatic position, had run Disarmament Commission's financial affairs that her critics say major financial delinquencies have occurred during her tenure.
And this adds to assumptions that the UK’s spying apparatus is using the inexperienced Ashton to run over the EU foreign policy. Veteran EU diplomats firmly believe that Lady Ashton's deputy Cooper is acting as the EU's shadow foreign policy chief. Cooper is a close friend of the MI6 chief John Sawers.
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