Nuclear talks with Iran, a Kosovo agreement or mediation in Egypt – the constantly under-rated figure of Catherine Ashton is now emerging to shape Europe’s international standing.

Calendar week 49: first, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry passed by on his way to the Middle East. Then the Afghan and Turkish foreign ministers came in for a chat. King Abdullah of Jordan suddenly made an appearance, so a planned meeting with the prime ministers of Kosovo and Serbia had to be cut short. Then Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Zarif called; the negotiations about dismantling Iran’s nuclear program needed to get started.

Loneliness and boredom are not among Catherine Ashton’s problems.

When the High Representative of Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union is not holding high-level meetings in her office, she dashes from crisis to crisis. As if that were not enough, she is also supposed to be building up the embryonic European diplomatic service, the European External Action Service (EEAS). She likens this exercise to flying a plane whose wings you are still building.

Despite her extraordinary commitment, Ashton, 57, was until recently derided as an utter failure. The French called her a “zero”. At home, one Whitehall source even described her as “a garden gnome”.

But now her time has come. On November 24, six world powers signed an interim agreement with Iran to freeze Tehran’s nuclear programme.

A small lady with unkempt hair in a copper-coloured coat was at the centre of it: Catherine Ashton was the only woman in the group of men – after the signing, all of them hugged and kissed her – except the Iranian foreign minister, who for religious reasons abstained from body contact. Even Britain’s normally sceptical “Daily Telegraph” paid her tribute under the headline: “Catherine Ashton: From Zero to Hero”.

Ashton had a tough time at home in Britain before going to Brussels. Her surprise nomination for the European top job in 2009 angered many. Ashton had only been a junior minister - for education, and later for justice. She was appointed speaker of the House of Lords and 2008 she became trade commissioner in Brussels for a year.

Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair made her a life peer in 1999. For non-British readers: Ashton had absolutely no blue blood – she is the daughter of a coal miner and was the first of her family to go to university. Her title, Baroness of Upholland, indicates only that she belongs to the Labour Party aristocracy - at least, since her marriage to top pollster Peter Kellner, who used to advise Blair.

Many wanted to give the top EU diplomatic job more weight and saw a former prime minister like Tony Blair or at least a foreign minister like David Miliband as more suitable. But Ashton did not only have a biographical weakness – she had another handicap, which still haunts her: She hates the limelight and avoids journalists wherever she can. That made it more difficult to market her properly after her appointment.

The first weeks were awful. “Mrs Ashton, is it true that you are not qualified for the job?” a reporter asked while pushing his microphone through the window of the car in which she had fled. The rudeness of the media, especially the British variety, was too much for her. She fell silent.

Not only journalists but also political opponents gave her a hard time.

“She was never elected”, ranted Nigel Farage in the European Parliament. For the charismatic chief of the Eurosceptic UKIP party, the shy Ashton was an easy victim. “She even earns more than Barack Obama”, Farage revealed. Ashton is indeed paid £287,000, rather higher than the US president’s £250,000.

“That goes to show how the European political class takes advantage of the taxpayer at home,” Farage added.

Catherine Ashton did not react but instead went to work.

According to EU’s Lisbon Treaty, she is not only the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, but also the Vice-President of the European Commission. These grand titles, however, cannot conceal that foreign policy is still a matter decided by the member states at a national level. Mrs Ashton may negotiate in the name of all 28 members but only after they have reached a unanimous decision in the European Council. Another problem: national leaders claim all the successes on the European stage as theirs, while every failure is dumped at Brussels’ door.

In a rare interview, the EU foreign minister told Britain’s “Guardian” how she met a young woman in Libya’s capital Benghazi at the height of the civil war. She said: “We only want what you have. Democracy is part of your daily life.” Ashton has never forgotten the encounter, because she knew what democracy means in practice: “The police works for the state, the courts operate independently, the administration is not corrupt and citizens’ rights are respected.”

She wanted to work to make this possible in other parts of the world, too.  After her Guardian interview, the High Representative picked up her shopping bags and left the London coffee shop the way she had arrived: totally unrecognised.

But Ashton has succeeded in turning her fear of the spotlight into a virtue: She works very well behind the scenes. That was how she convinced Kosovo Albanians and Serbs to sign an historic agreement. It was Ashton’s idea to bring the prime ministers of Serbia and Kosovo together in her new office at the headquarters of the “European External Action Service”.

“The two of them had never met”, she wrote later, rather proud of herself, in an opinion piece for the “New York Times”. The accession negotiations for Serbia could start next month.

Catherine Ashton had no sooner explained to Serbs and Kosovars what European soft power means than Egypt’s army staged a coup against elected Islamist president Mohammed Morsi on July 3^rd. Morsi, who had followed an ever harder Islamist course during his one-year term, disappeared to an unknown location.

Ashton went into action. Even if the Americans were still the most powerful foreign player in the Egyptian game of power poker, their communication with the Muslim Brotherhood was complicated by their support for the army. The EU representative for Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, kept all channels open. She insisted to be allowed a visit to Morsi’s prison cell and her wish was granted on July 30^th. She flew to a military camp by helicopter and sat for two hours with the deposed president. He seemed to be in good shape, got two daily papers to read every day and could watch state TV. The fridge was well filled, Ashton told the press later. She added: “We had a friendly, open and frank discussion for two hours. As you know, I have met him many times before.”

What she did not say: Morsi almost exploded with anger about his removal from power. He is still in prison, while hated ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak is under much more comfortable house arrest.

Egypt is a tough case. Catherine Ashton can only do what she does best: keep all channels open. This talent produced her third success of this year, the interim agreement with Iran.

For years, the nuclear talks with the mullahs’ regime in Tehran were a charade. Only when power shifted from radical Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to  more moderate Hassan Rouhani did things get moving. Secret bilateral negotiations between Iran and the US administration led to agreement in a few months.

The person who wove all those different threads together was Catherine Ashton. The so-called P5+1 group – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany – was in existence throughout all the sanctions and war threats. From the beginning of the nuclear negotiations in 2003, it was France, Great Britain and Germany who led the talks. Russia, China and the US came in later. The diplomatic track with Iran was always seen as a core interest of European diplomacy.

Once Mohammed Jawad Zarif was appointed as Iran’s Foreign Minister in the middle of August, Ashton was on the phone inviting him to join the P5+1 group. She gathered all the participants together in Geneva and started a negotiating marathon.

Her advisers say Catherine Ashton does not need much sleep. This was an advantage during the nerve-wracking negotiations because the EU chief diplomat did not get much rest. Some nights she hardly went to bed at all.

There is still criticism of Ashton. She wants to do everything herself, does not delegate well and when her nerves fray, she snaps at her subordinates. But her job was almost impossible: she had to represent a European Union which was on the brink of collapse. While she was trying to sell a common foreign policy, the EU was in danger of losing some of its members and even its currency.

Until a few months ago, Ashton seemed to be coming to a premature end. The British Labour politician has no chance of being nominated again by David Cameron’s Conservative government. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski seemed to have the best chances of succeeding her. The confident former pupil at the British elite public school of Eton seemed better suited to giving European foreign policy a face from 2014 onwards.

But now, maybe Ashton will fight to stay – after all she had a very successful year. And she has built excellent contacts with her colleagues – her close relationship with Hilary Clinton, for example, is legendary. Even her political enemies started calling her “Cathy” to move a little closer to her.

In Ramallah, Pristina, Cairo and Kiev, meanwhile, the word has gone around that there is someone to talk to in Brussels. From all corners of the world, one of her advisers says, he hears the question: “Cathy, can you do something for us?”

That does not only mean a lot for the grossly under-estimated Catherine Ashton. It also is very good for the European Union that she represents.