22| F ROM SELF ­DOUBT TO SELF ­ASSURANCE The need for reliable technical infrastructure is obvious and a good protection against cyber­attacks even more pertinent in a post-Covid digital world. Secure and reasonably user-friendly phones are now being rolled out but secure speech rooms are still scarce. The security of communications has been an issue since long before the creation of the EEAS and remains a very serious weakness, one that is unfortunately shared with EU institutions. The EEAS inherited the dysfunctionality of both the Commission and the Council. The interoperability of their systems, in particular the encrypted ones, and those of member states, is low. Both a concerted interinstitutional effort and substantial investment are needed to address these dangerous shortfalls in earnest. Improve delivery on the EEAS’ tasks Coordination: the EEAS as a coherence-builder? While foreign policy coordination between member states works better than it did a decade ago(on energy and climate, for example), the integration of policies could still be improved(on migration and digital policies). The reasons for this can partly be traced back to the‘original sins’: the dichotomy between the CFSP and all other EU policies in separate treaties, with different competence attributions, institutional arrangements and decision-making procedures; the impossible job profile of the HRVP; the establishment of the EEAS, which was “too far removed” from the Commission and bedevilled by a compartmentalisation approach, assembling building blocks(geographical MDs and CSDP bodies) 19 without securing the proper plumbing between them. If protagonists do not want to be coordinated, then building coherence for the EEAS will require a stronger leadership role. Josep Borrell’s‘Team Europe’ approach may be a promising way of‘nudging’ the EU family members(including the member states) not only to join up the different strands of internal and external action, but also to ensure coherence between these and the CFSP/CSDP. This could be done by uniting, inter alia, Commission-managed policy instruments and budgets in a new strategic frame(e.g. gearing industrial policy toward complementing soft power with a harder power dimension), supplemented by resources from member states, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This may, however, lead to new tensions with the Commission in areas‘traditionally’ and exclusively allocated to it, such as trade, or indeed to the EEAS(cf. discussions about the European Defence Fund since the advent of DG for Defence Industry and Space). In such cases, efforts to overcome coherence obstacles should be undertaken in EXCO and the Commissioners’ Group for a Stronger Europe in the World. Positive examples of co-leadership(e.g. HRVP Borrell with Commissioner Breton enhancing the European industrial autonomy including in the area of defence) could be replicated, both horizontally and vertically. 19 The‘institutionalisation’ of the integrated approach to security and peace in a designated directorate of the EEAS is a meritorious development.