This time last year, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s top diplomat, was being swarmed by Iranian MPs straining to take selfies with her as she visited Tehran and vowed to implement the 2015 nuclear agreement. Snaps of Ms Mogherini, wrapped in a chequered headscarf, seemed a distant memory this week as the US reimposed sanctions and started dismantling the deal.
With China and Russia, the EU remains a fierce defender of the agreement and has vowed to shield European businesses from US efforts to prevent them from trading with Iran. So Ms Mogherini, who is the closest thing Brussels has to a foreign minister, has come out swinging. This week she urged companies to “increase business with and in Iran as part of something [that] for us is a security priority”.
The sanctions are the latest flare-up in the worst crisis in EU-US relations in the postwar era. They are just the latest headache for a woman who has spent the past four years dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, negotiations on the Iran deal, western intervention in Syria and, latterly, Donald Trump.
Since November 2014, the 45-year-old Italian social democrat has served as the EU’s “high representative for foreign affairs”, one of the bloc’s most unusual posts. The job straddles two rival political power centres in Brussels: the European Council, made up of 28 member state governments, and the technocratic European Commission. Ms Mogherini’s “double hat” gives her a foot in both camps. The role was created in 2009 to solve the EU’s “Kissinger problem” — the former US secretary of state is often quoted ( inaccurately) as asking: “Who do I call when I want to speak to Europe?”
But critics say Ms Mogherini — like her UK predecessor, Catherine Ashton — has been hampered by a relatively low profile and the enduring reality that the EU’s big foreign policy decisions remain the preserve of its most powerful members. “She’s been everywhere and nowhere at the same time,” says a former EU foreign minister.
Ms Mogherini was plucked from relative obscurity by prime minister Matteo Renzi in early 2014 to become Italy’s youngest foreign minister. Nine months later she became high representative. Her term expires in 2019.
She has cultivated a poised, if sometimes frosty, persona on the international diplomatic stage. In private, friends say she is informal and charming, turning to “WhatsApp diplomacy” rather than sticking to rigid protocol.
Ms Mogherini’s quick-fire promotions have led to claims that she is out of her depth. Her most vociferous critics accuse her of taking a soft line on Russian aggression and failing to speak out against human rights abuses in Iran. “If Federica Mogherini didn’t exist, the world’s autocrats would be trying to invent her,” Eli Lake, a hawkish US columnist, wrote for Bloomberg View.
The complaints about her handling of Russia have been hardest to shake off. Italy has often been less critical of Russia than other EU governments, but “she was more Italian than Italians usually are”, says a former national diplomat recalling Ms Mogherini’s pro-Russian interventions as Rome’s foreign minister in early 2014. More recently, critics have pointed to her reticent support of European Council president Donald Tusk’s decision to recall Brussels’ ambassador to Moscow temporarily following the novichok poisoning scandal in the UK. Ms Mogherini’s defenders say her approach simply reflects perennial splits on how to deal with President Vladimir Putin. To date, she has avoided significant spats with London, Berlin and Paris over the issue.
Born in Rome, Ms Mogherini is the only child of a movie director father and an architect mother. She studied political science at the University of Rome before specialising in political Islam on an Erasmus study abroad year in Aix-en-Provence. Married with two daughters, she speaks fluent English and French.
Before becoming an MP in 2008, Ms Mogherini was active on the left in causes such as nuclear disarmament and the Middle East peace process. She rose through the ranks of the former communist wing of Italy’s Democratic party as a rare figure with an interest in foreign affairs. Her leftwing sympathies combine with fierce pro-Europeanism. She often says that Italy has two capitals: Brussels and Rome.
Counterparts describe the Iran deal as the high point of Ms Mogherini’s career and one of the few instances where the bloc could deploy its collective diplomatic weight. “She had the right touch at the right moment,” says Wendy Sharman, one of the US’s chief negotiators during the final stage of talks in 2015.
Now Ms Mogherini’s star is on the wane. Her pro-EU convictions are out of step with Italy’s populist government and she has declined to stand as the centre-left candidate to become the next European Commission president. Colleagues say she will probably take a break from public office. They describe Ms Mogherini as stoic, relaxed and impervious to personal insults.
“I’ve never seen her lose her temper,” says Nathalie Tocci, a think-tank director who was travelling with Ms Mogherini in the Middle East while EU leaders were thrashing out her appointment as high representative. “She fell asleep, switched her phone off and woke up in the morning to find 3am calls from Renzi. He couldn’t believe that she was sleeping when leaders were deciding on the job. But that’s just the way she is. Everything was a bonus.”
The writer is the FT’s EU correspondent
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