This is Paul Adamson and welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of my online magazine InCompass.

I chat informally with personalities from a wide variety of backgrounds on a wide variety of subjects.

If you like this podcast, you can go to the magazine's website, Encompass-Europe.com,

or any of the main platforms for free access to all the podcast to date. I hope you enjoy this

conversation.

My guest is Stefano Sanino.

Stefanosanino is the Secretary General of the European External Action Service.

Welcome to the podcast, Stefano.

Hi, Paul.

You've been in this new position since April of last year, and throughout the existence of the AAS,

there's been no shortage of commentary and analysis

of its activities, of its performance. When you took over the job back in April of last year,

what was your own personal analysis of how the EAS was working?

Well, first of all, one has to say that the EAS is 10 years old, so it's not too old. It's a relatively young creation

and still, I would say, in the making. So when I arrived, I knew the place from outside. They

had never really worked within the EAS. And they found the house which was very much focused on crisis management, on let's

say the classical elements of foreign policy and with a very well-developed defense and military

dimension. I thought that what we had to do was maybe to rebalance a little bit more

and to look at what is the European agenda, as I call it, that is to say all the policies

that are being developed by the European Union and all the external dimension of the internal

policies of the EU. So I found a place with a lot of good professionals,

still a little bit soul searching in terms of identity,

...