Kallas had presented the group at an informal EU defence ministers' meeting in Ireland around September 1. It would bring political and military leaders together to develop new approaches to European defence — advisory only, no binding power over member states.
"The aim is to have some of the brightest minds on security and defence come together and really provide out-of-the-box solutions on how we can be faster in fulfilling these gaps and how we can be more effective," she said in Ireland.
Several member states moved against it. Participants had never been publicly named. The group never officially launched. "Some member states felt this was not the right path to pursue at this moment," said a source.
The cancellation arrives at a particularly fraught moment for the EEAS. Kallas had assembled a new leadership team at the service only recently, in a bid to entrench her institutional position. The advisory group was cancelled before that position could gain any visible traction from the initiative.
Beyond member state resistance, institutional pressure bears down from the Commission. Ursula von der Leyen has pressed steadily for more influence over EU foreign policy, entering into friction with Kallas over significant questions including policy toward Israel. A Franco-German proposal would formalize that shift, placing the EEAS under the European Commission president's supervision while expanding the High Representative's portfolio.
An EU official pointed to what remains unresolved. "The diagnosis has not changed that Europe needs to deliver faster on defence. Europe still needs to confront the question the group was designed to address, how to strengthen European defence faster."
A defence group announced in Ireland, cancelled on a Sunday in Brussels, before a single meeting and without ever publicly naming its members — the episode illustrates the difficulty of driving EU foreign policy from the centre.
