b'3.1 The EUs External Action Service and the UKs Foreign Office more than a quarter of its budget in real terms. Since 2010, three embassies have suspended operations and 13 consulates or consular offices have been closed. Today, there are 268 posts in 168 countries and 4,500 staff (excluding local hires). Costly expatriate British diplomatic posts are being replaced with cheaper local staff: the next generation to run the Foreign Office will have less overseas experience. In March 2011, the FCO employed 5,045 civil servants from the UK and a further 8,500 local hires. Three years on, the UK-employed workforce had shrunk to 4,609, while the number of local employees had risen to 9,200. Prime UK Embassies, for example in Portugal and Thailand, have been sold off.The decline is showing no signs of stopping. The FCOs budget is planned to decrease by 100 million, more than 8% of its total budget, in 2019 and 2020. The UK is losing its role as a key geopoliticalpower. The UK has been obliged to cut back to trade and limit its interest in politics, sokey issues like the rise of radical Islam have not received the attention which they clearlydeserve. Cuts have been so drastic that The European External Action Service (EEAS)diplomats have had to pay out of their own sounds vaguely like some special-forcespockets to take contacts out for meals. offshoot. The EEAS is, in fact, the European Unions own Foreign Service, introducedA Foreign Office memo (leaked to Total in late 2009 by the Treaty of Lisbon.1 SincePolitics) spells this out. The memo explains then, it has expanded to 139 embassiesthat band A and B staff members posted (in the jargon delegations) covering 163abroad will be reduced to 50 essential countries ranging from Afghanistan topositions,resulting in about 450 fewer staff Zimbabwe, including Barbados, Fiji, Jamaicamembers overseas over the next four years. and Mauritius. By 2015, the EEAS had 4,955According to the memo, these cuts will employees, some of whom were delegatedreduce to a minimum the numbers of A and from the European Commission, and a lavishB Band staff [the FCO] posted overseas. annual budget of almost 1 billion in 2015.This will effectively mean that very few junior staff members at the Foreign Office will Compare this with Britains Foreign Officenow have the opportunity to work abroad(FCO). The FCO has been a major victim ofaffecting both the volume of experience in UK government cuts. During the (coalition)the service, and the attraction of the job for governments five-year term, the FCO losthigh-caliber new candidates.143'