Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, announced the advisory body at an informal defence ministers' meeting around September 1. It was intended to bring political and military leaders together in a purely consultative format, with no decision-making power on behalf of member states or executive authority.
Member states pushed back regardless. Several governments deemed the initiative the wrong approach. Invitees were set to meet Kallas Monday at a Brussels venue for a fireside chat. Word of the cancellation arrived Sunday afternoon. The participants' names had never been made public.
"Some member states felt this was not the right path to pursue at this moment," a source said.
For Kallas, the episode is a clear setback. She had recently assembled a new EEAS leadership team to strengthen her position within the bloc's foreign policy machinery. The group was cancelled before it officially launched — before its membership was ever announced.
An EU official kept the focus on what remains unsettled. "The diagnosis has not changed that Europe needs to deliver faster on defence. Europe still needs to confront the question the group was designed to address, how to strengthen European defence faster."
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's push for greater say over EU foreign policy, and the Franco-German proposal to place the EEAS under the European Commission president's supervision, compound the pressure on a High Representative who just absorbed a public reversal.
