Spanish Belén Martínez Carbonell becomes Kaja Kallas’s ‘number two’

Eduardo González The Spanish diplomat Belén Martínez Carbonell has been appointed to the post of Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS), thus becoming the "number two" to the High Representative of the European Union for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas. Martínez Carbonell, born in Ourense in 1969, has a long career in EU diplomacy, where she has been working for more than fifteen years both at the EEAS and at the European Commission. Since July 2021, she has served as Director-General of the Global Agenda and Multilateral Relations of the European External Action Service, by direct appointment of Borrell. Previously, she held various positions, including political adviser at the EU Delegation in Washington, member of the cabinet of former Foreign Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner (2005-2010), head of the Division for the Andean Countries, head of the Political Coordination Division within the Department of Political Affairs and director of Human Resources at the EEAS. The Spanish diplomat will take up her duties on 1 February. From her new position at the EU's foreign policy body, which manages 145 delegations around the world, she will be responsible for administrative and budgetary management, as well as coordination between the Brussels headquarters and its representations abroad. The appointment of Belén Martínez Carbonell comes after Kaja Kallas dismissed her predecessor, Stefano Sannino, who will go on to lead the new Directorate General for the Mediterranean, reporting to Dubravka Šuica, the current European Commissioner for the Mediterranean. Sannino was Italy's ambassador to Spain between 2016 and early 2020 and was appointed 'number two' to the then High Representative, Josep Borrell, in November of that same year. For his part, the Swedish diplomat Olof Skoog will take up the post of Deputy Secretary General for Political Affairs at the EEAS as of 1 March. Skoog, the current EU Special Representative for Human Rights and former head of the EU delegation to the United Nations in New York, will replace the Spaniard Enrique Mora, who was Director General of Foreign and Security Policy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until February 2020, when he was called by Borrell to join the EEAS.

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