João Vale de Almeida has been appointed the EU’s new ambassador to the US. While his predecessor John Bruton was well known in the White House and Capitol Hill, Vale de Almeida cannot exactly be considered a “heavyweight”. This Portuguese Eurocrat, current Director General of the External Relations of the European Commission, is personally and politically very close to Barroso. Some media has even been labelled him the “Barroso man”. The paradox : all EU missions abroad are now, according to the Lisbon Treaty, answerable to Baroness Catherine Ashton, not Barroso. The risk : symbols and personal relationships may add a bit of confusion in the whole institutional architecture.

Photo : Flickr/ Downing Street