The history of diplomatic doings is often interesting - what  interests me today is this business of the EU seeking a separate diplomatic mission although each of its member states has one. So would the Ambassadors work beneath, with or despite the EU presence in UK?

I think it has been refused and there are possibly rumblings in the distant hills beyond the ditch - has such an arrangement happened before? What about Norway, does every foreign state - dog - and master - have a diplomatic protocol? I know local Consul Generals can represent countries who cannot afford a full consulate  or sometimes a friendly country can serve another - within well defined parameters. A local appointee doesn't have much clout but usually gives a damn good National Day thrash once a year that someone else pays for and the local 'in' crowd and the personnel of other missions enjoy.

Norway has embassies, yes. The EU embassy is in Klingenberggata and I've been helping them lately with their Utdanningsdag initiative, providing free laptops for disadvantaged children's home education (I helped set up the antivirus deployment and management system for them).

The UK decision not to grant the delegation in London full ambassadorial status is weird, petty even. It is afforded this by every country where it has a delegation - European countries have their own embassies of course, but the stuff that's organised on their behalf if they are members of the EU (including little matters like dealing with third countries over trade issues) is best handled by dealing directly with the organisers using standard diplomatic protocols. It's just a common sense thing.

nordmann wrote:

Norway has embassies, yes. The EU embassy is in Klingenberggata and I've been helping them lately with their Utdanningsdag initiative, providing free laptops for disadvantaged children's home education (I helped set up the antivirus deployment and management system for them).

The UK decision not to grant the delegation in London full ambassadorial status is weird, petty even. It is afforded this by every country where it has a delegation - European countries have their own embassies of course, but the stuff that's organised on their behalf if they are members of the EU (including little matters like dealing with third countries over trade issues) is best handled by dealing directly with the organisers using standard diplomatic protocols. It's just a common sense thing.

I hope you are not suggesting that the UK government might use common sense.  If so, may I start a thread on the history of unicorns?

Please do, bren. Unicorns are such fun.

Hopefully someone will explain how the double protocol works - and which one is boss-man. Do they deal with different issues? Which has seniority? And please believe me in the world of diplomats the code of protocols is a minefield. In the British one some years back one could tell exactly where a member of a foreign service was in the pecking order by a glimpse of their chairs.... no arms, wooden arms, part  padded arms, fully padded arms. I jest not.  So, who comes first in the pecking order the EU chappie or one of the country;s in the Union... and there is a protocol about their order, too. When you are looking for common sense, bren try another planet.

I don't think it's that aspect to protocol that motivated Johnson to aim such a seemingly petty insult in the EU's direction. I'd say it's more to do with the actual protocols as defined in the Vienna Convention by which embassies, diplomatic status and rules of engagement are defined. If the diplomatic mission is accepted by the host to be "full" then the head of that mission, ambassador or not, can demand an audience with certain designated political appointees - normally the prime minister or foreign minister in the UK. The host can refuse, but only at risk of inviting retaliation of some sort. That's the bit Johnson wasn't looking forward to - being hauled over the diplomatic coals by the seat of his pants every time his government broke the terms of the trade deal over the next while, especially by some little Portuguese upstart who - in his day - was a "real" journalist to boot. It would have reminded Johnson too much of being hauled up before that frightfully lower middle class housemaster Hammond back in the day - another upstart strangely awarded authority over his obvious betters and who had sussed the snot-nosed and acne-ridden model of Johnson down to a T in his time.

This time however he could demote his potential nemesis down to mere "prefect" level and simply taunt him with a dead pig whenever he has the gall to issue his social superiors with a "come hither" request. And all it took was breaking yet another international convention established by treaty. Or have I got the wrong prime minister? Pig fetishists all blur together after a time.

I think we have a gibberish thread overspill, captain.

That's ok. No need to apologise. We can diplomatically look past your occasional - ahem - "lapses".

Not apologising. just sad that you could not pick up the Abide with me ref always sung at footer matches of import in UK along with God Save the Queen and the  Hand of God ref. All my convoluted gibberish that you were unable to read. You failed Bletchley, chummy.......... and I was once told as a teenager I was would have been Bletchley material by someone very high up who was there. I had an exceptional memory, once upon a once. Alas long gone - but I am making a complex fair isle pattern I recall using 65 years ago so I reckon bits of it is there.
Back to the protocols - so who is top dog in the EU diplomatic ratings? The EU Ambassador or any one of the Union countries......... I doubt I shall be asking any of them round for neat little sarnies and a cuppa but one must always be prepared, darling.

It depends on who makes the overture to whom and why. If the UK wants to make an apology, for example, for screwing the lives of all the people in Ireland who were dependent on businesses previously working with or within Britain then they'd have a chat with the Irish ambassador. If the Irish felt there was any point expecting an apology then the same ambassador would insist on the British PM arranging a chat. If the UK wanted to somehow start fixing the clusterf*ck of a mess they've made, including all the damage they did to the Irish, then they'd best talk to the EU delegation. If the EU delegation want to let the clusterf*ckers know there's some punitive tariffs coming their way then they'd start the ball rolling. In each case the "top dog" is different.

If they all end up together in a banqueting hall hosted by some other party - the USA for example - then the EU would be last in the pecking order (a delegation, not a state embassy), and then I imagine the Irish crew (friendly state but not pushy when it comes to where they sit as long as they get the deals done) and finally the UK (pushy and who trade in arms, always a clincher) would be right up there next to the US hosts, and of course the food taster if they're wise.

So an EU ambassador would have delegation status....... this was sifted from the debris of UK/Irish trade relations stuff which is your on-going Cognative Bias in any discussion on the Board. Bring on the Unicorns.... (unfenced)

An embassy is a mission with a permanent home that acts as a delegation. All the same thing. The EU chooses to call its delegations abroad simply delegations, though it retains use of the word ambassador for its chief representative. All very prosaic stuff set out in the Vienna Convention (which actually prefers the term mission over all the others and splits them into three categories, full, plenipotentiary and temporary). Consulates are the plenipotentiary types. Britain has by far the greatest number of these around the world.

In Norwegian "ambassador" means the whole delegation. "Ambassador chief" is the top guy or gal. All just words. Status depends very much on to what extent your host can read international law, let alone obey the treaty that they've signed up to.

So no, nothing "sifted". As usual, just explained.

Well now that is what I wanted to know. Apart from wondering what happens in discussion when an a foreign country's rep meets up member country's rep along with an EU rep. Or do they have designated briefs no joking here - I am serious about this. Could the EU's delegation finding supercede a member country's decision? I think it would. Not well put, but I think you do understand what I am about here. The EU is a strong power house that can over ride the sovereign rights of. nation members. And if that is so then the others need not have ambassadors etc in place.

PS I ought say I have not read anything of this at all - don't know why the EU protocol was rejected or if indeed reason was given. I am just a simple old gran knitting away here and trying to make sense of more than is good for me.

The EU delegation represents the EU Commission. "Override" is probably not the correct expression but where the Commission's policy outweighs a member state's policy in the same area then a host to both's embassies would do well to talk to the EU guys if that's the area they wish to discuss.

Which is why Johnson's apparently "whimsical" demotion of the EU delegation (only in his own eyes of course) is a very pointed diplomatic slur. It removes the right of the delegation to demand discussion about anything it finds pertinent, though Johnson can demand an audience with them whenever he wants. In practice however there's an easy workaround. If something big comes up that the delegation wants Johnson to appear in person to explain himself they will simply get the others - the Irish, French, Spanish, Germans etc - to make the demand for them, invite them along (which Johnson can't prevent) and then everyone meets as planned anyway except in butter knife cutting atmospheres instead of over a chummy dinner. All very petty UK posturing, and actually quite demeaning to Britain's own status when you think about it.

nordmann wrote:

An embassy is a mission with a permanent home that acts as a delegation.

Yes. In 1914 there only nine embassies to the Court of St James’s. They were those of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Turkey, Russia, America and Japan.

Before the 1940s the British Foreign Office differentiated between diplomatic missions which were embassies and those which were legations. An embassy (headed by an ambassador) represented a great power, while a legation (headed by a minister) represented a lesser state. The likes of Holland, Portugal, Denmark and Belgium were counted as lesser states and were represented by legations along with Sweden, Abyssinia, Brazil, Norway, Persia, Mexico, Greece, Siam, Argentina, Serbia, China, Peru and Switzerland etc. Former great power and England’s oldest ally Portugal is particularly noteworthy in that it had indeed previously been afforded full ambassadorial status but this had been downgraded in the 19th Century. It was restored after the First World War. Belgium also received ambassadorial status at that time. Denmark (former ruler of England and later receiver of English ambassadors made famous by William Shakespeare) would have to wait until the 1940s before regaining ambassadorial status as too would the Netherlands. As early as the 1950s an ageing Winston Churchill complained about how many embassies there were by then in London and that he was too old to know or care anything about a place called ‘Cambodia’. He literally didn't live to see the half of it. Today there are over 110 embassies in London with a further 50 high commissions.

Britain's "snobbiness" when it came to recognising foreign riff-raff extended to Ireland when, in its first flush of independence, the new state asked to set up an embassy in London. Depending on who they spoke to they were refused because they were a dominion, they weren't even a proper dominion, they were still fundamentally British, they couldn't guarantee their rent on any premises (not true - they started out of a bedsit in Camden Town and paid the rent on time to the landlady every Friday), they had to join the waiting list at the end of the queue (number 167 or thereabouts) or, most often, they simply received a deafening silence.

Within three months they had opened a full embassy in Washington DC operating from a villa kindly gifted to them by Woodrow Wilson's sister-in-law and the Americans, who still recalled similar treatment from the Brits back in the day as equally ungrateful rebellious little buggers, took pity on them and also kindly loaned them a suite of rooms in the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, with the US ambassador acting as consul for the Irish. The intention was to shame the British into behaving less like an arrogant and petulant dumped lover (who had never realised just how unrequited that love had been), and to start behaving with a little modicum of maturity. However both the Irish and the Americans had underestimated just how deeply the arrogance was embedded in the species and now the poor US ambassador found himself being summoned every other day to St James' Palace to explain his new tenants or, preferably, evict them. They were even told that their place on the top rung of the diplomatic pecking order was in jeopardy if they didn't "wise up" and the whole thing was shaping up to be a major diplomatic incident. Meanwhile the Irish had rather prudently retained their Camden bedsit and had started issuing Irish passports from the address, even going so far as to purchase the premises next door - a printers as it happened.

In the end it was Guinness that rescued the situation. The brewers, headed up by their pater familias Lord Iveagh, stepped in and basically underwrote every transaction enacted by the new Irish Department of External Affairs (one of the first being the purchase of an embassy in Santiago, Chile, next door to the British consulate and twice the size). They gave their beautifully apportioned and spacious family "town house" in Dublin to the department as their headquarters, and the equivalent in London to the department as its UK embassy. Lord Iveagh himself went on a one-man diplomatic assault on the entire British establishment - badgering officials, aristocratic buddies, even King George V (they were members of the same club). Within a few short weeks the Irish finally received full diplomatic recognition.

The big winners in this were Guinness, whose efforts hadn't gone unnoticed back home and who went from "suspicious West-Brit" status to patriotic emblems of the Irish Free State overnight (it's no accident that the Irish state harp symbol is the Guinness harp reversed but otherwise exactly the same design). Oh, and also the humble little Camden printers who, until the 1980s, held exclusive rights to print Irish passports outside of Ireland. By the 1950s their dingy Camden basement premises had long been surpassed by their Pittsburgh PA plant and their boss was bumming around the Caribbean with Graham Greene and Ian Fleming who, no doubt, were not averse to availing themselves of "free samples" of their pal's product. But that's a whole other story.

It could be said that the Dublin government did very well to go from self-rule to full embassy status in only 27 years. The Americans had had to wait well over 100 years after independence to achieve the same. It was only in 1893 that the American Legation in London was promoted to embassy.
   
The distinction in rank between legation and embassy, however, was only something which existed in practice but not in theory. The British Foreign Office operated under the terms of the Congress of Vienna’s Final Act of 1815 and its Annexe 17 which spelled out ‘les Règlements sur le rang entre les agents diplomatiques’. The Vienna Regulations as they came to be known, considered embassies and legations to be of equal rank. The promoting of embassies over legations, by powers such as Britain, had no basis in international law and really was just a case of snobbery (as you say) on the one hand but also something of a cultural cringe on the other. 

How this snobbery/cultural cringe arose, perhaps, was in the royalist bias inherent in the Regulations. These had been largely drawn up by French Foreign Minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand in an attempt to restore France’s royalist credentials (after the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era) and also to bolster his own standing vis-à-vis the restored Bourbon king Louis XVIII who distrusted him. Louis’ distrust was somewhat understandable considering Talleyrand’s chameleon-like career which had seen him morph from aristocratic bishop to anti-clerical revolutionary and then subsequently serve as foreign minister for the Republican directorate and then the Bonapartist consulate and then the Napoleonic empire and now for the restored Bourbon monarchy.
 
The Vienna Regulations showed this royalist bias by assuming, for example, that envoys and/or ministers of particular diplomatic missions would be ‘accrédités auprès des souverains’ – accredited to sovereigns. The Regulations were signed by Austria, France, Sweden, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Prussia and Great Britain & Ireland which were the same powers as had signed the Treaty of Paris in 1814. Needless to say that they were also all monarchies. The preamble of the Regulations stated that the intention was ‘pour prévenir les embarras qui se sont souvent présentés et qui pourraient naître encore des prétentions de préséance entre les différents agents diplomatiques’ – to prevent the embarrassment which has often presented itself and which could arise again from presumptions of precedence between different diplomatic agents. Significantly it went on to say that the 8 signatory powers ‘croient devoir inviter ceux des autres têtes couronnées à adopter le même règlement’ – believed it to be their duty to invite the plenipotentiaries of other crowned heads to adopt the same regulation. Note the term ‘têtes couronnées’. Several of the states represented at Vienna, however, were not kingdoms. These included the Republic of Genoa and the Swiss Cantons. The fate of Genoa was highly indicative of the mindset at Vienna. Having lasted for 700 years, the republic had been occupied by Bonaparte in 1796 and was later annexed to France. Following Napoleon’s defeat, however, the republic was restored only for its representatives at Vienna to then be told that they were there under false pretences and that Liguria was now sovereign territory of the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia and the House of Savoy. Maybe that was one of the ‘embarras des prétentions’ which the Regulations alluded to.