Ioan Mircea Paşcu (S&D), in writing. – 2013 is the year of the first review of the newly-established EEAS, set up by the Lisbon Treaty at a time when the current world crisis was not yet a permanent feature of our lives. Looking back, one sees the true dimensions of the task confronting the EEAS: to construct itself - in a field still subject to national decision - at a time when the EU has been forced to become increasingly inwards-looking and, inevitably, centrifugal, given the propensity of the MS to care more for themselves individually than for the common entity the EU represents. Those were huge challenges, given that the EAAS was a first-time experience, in the sense that it combined foreign policy, development and defence - which were fields pursued individually and in parallel; that it did not have enough personnel, which had to be recruited and, most important, that it had to react to a number of important issues, many conflictual in nature, while structuring itself. Although I personally have my doubts about any bureaucracy, I have to recognise that, in this case, the EAAS has succeeded in playing the positive role of doubling national foreign action with EU action.