Lady Ashton hasn't exactly shone during the first few weeks in her new job: on the contrary, some believe that she is seriously undermining her credibility. It appears that she spends more time on the Eurostar that links London and Brussels than in her office in the Belgian capital. Clinton calls her to coordinate aid to Haiti? Ashton is not there, and Barroso has to send the development commissioner. A few days later she justified herself by saying that the EU had sent four times more aid than the USA, and since she was “neither a doctor nor a fireman” there was no reason for her to go there… weak excuses, because, as her commissioner colleague Michel Barnier recalled, during the tsunami crisis in 2004, when he was French foreign minister, he visited the area immediately. During the press conference on the progress of aid to Haiti a few days later, she again acquitted herself poorly, and was saved by the Spanish foreign minister, Moratinos, who can speak three languages. In other words, Ashton does not seem cut out to carry into the world the “one voice” Europe had envisaged when the post was created. She is probably the only person in Brussels who can't speak more than one language. Urgently required: a language teacher and a decent flat for in her new job.
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