Ashton names EU foreign-service priorities at low-key launch event

Relations with the US and China, climate change, poverty eradication, crisis management and counter-terrorism are to be the top priorities of the EU's new diplomatic corps, EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton told her stable of 136 ambassadors at a behind-closed-doors meeting in Brussels on Wednesday (1 December).

The speech, given at a regular annual gathering of EU envoys in the European Commission headquarters, doubled as a low-key launch ceremony for the European External Ac...