Ashton's got it better than Solana

The EU's erstwhile high representative for common foreign and security policy Javier Solana stepped down yesterday after ten years in office. The liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza finds that taking office was more difficult for Solana than for his successor Catherine Ashton, the EU's new high representative for foreign affairs: "Yesterday Javier Solana ... left office without much fanfare. The attention of the cameras and headlines was focused on his successor Catherine Ashton. Unlike her, he was already known when he took up office in 1999 (with a career in the Spanish government and five years at the head of Nato). Nevertheless his job was an uphill climb, and he had to fight for every scrap of recognition in the negotiating rooms of Europe and the world. Ashton, by contrast, starts as a nobody with everything ready and waiting for her: a powerful office and - thanks to the Treaty of Lisbon - the position of deputy head of the European Commission."

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