Which country has the best foreign service? France, emerged the answer at a seminar organized this year by Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) that was attended by nearly 50 British business leaders, Whitehall officials, academics and journalists, noted an article in the Financial Times. "French diplomats fight tooth and claw for their national interests. They never give up in the fight for France. And they mix their diplomacy with some very fine dining to boot,” appreciated one participant.
The Financial Times reporter found it "remarkable” that "the FCO was prepared to engage in this kind of critical self-assessment in front of a group of outsiders. This rigorous drive for what it calls ‘dipdiplomatic
excellence’ has become a leitmotif of how it wants to operate.” "We’ve set ourselves the objective of being the best diplomatic service in the world,” noted Simon Fraser, FCO’s permanent secretary or top civil servant, who was interviewed by the newspaper. The write-up forwarded to Parsiana by Fraser’s wife Shireen Patel further quoted him as stating, "We are rigorously scoring ourselves and trying to assess the impact we are having as an organization… Setting ourselves objectives and calling in outsiders to monitor and evaluate where we are making a difference to UK policy.”
To operate within a severe budget cut, the FCO is expected to save around one-seventh of their discretionary annual spend, a figure equivalent to about £ 100 (Rs 8,600) m. Further as economic power shifts away from Europe towards the emerging economies of Asia and Latin America, the FCO is opening 11 new embassies and eight new consulates, closing subordinate posts (below the level of embassies) in Europe, shifting 300 staff to China, India, Brazil and other growing powers, and changing recruitment techniques and salary structures. Not only are they slashing by 90 percent the number of British diplomats posted abroad early in their careers by replacing them with locally hired nationals, they are also considering selling off parts of their two-billion property portfolio.
France reportedly allocates € five bn on foreign affairs including 1.9 bn for international development and cultural work. Their staff constitutes nearly 6,000 diplomats and officials based at home and abroad with 5,000 overseas staff employed locally. UK, in contrast, operated within a budget of £ 1.05 bn in 2011-12, a staff of 4,581 diplomats and officials, plus about 10,000 locally based staff in embassies and missions around the world.