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Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 11, Nº. 2 (November 2020-April 2021)

BUILDING INTELLIGENCE COOPERATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

JOÃO ESTEVENS

jestevens@fcsh.unl.pt

PhD student, researcher at IPRI-NOVA as a member of the research group 'Democracy and

Governance', where he is finishing his PhD in Global Studies (NOVA FCSH, Portugal) with a thesis

dedicated to the construction of democratic state punitiveness. Research Fellow at ICS-ULisboa,

as part of the research group 'Environment, Territory and Society'. He has a master’s in political

science and International Relations (NOVA FCSH) and a degree in Economics (NOVA SBE) and in

Political Science and International Relations (NOVA FCSH). He also has a postgraduate degree in

Intelligence Management and Security (NOVA IMS). He has developed research in the areas of

political demography, intelligence, security studies, democracy and punitive practices of the

State.

Abstract

European security is transnational in nature due to the interdependencies of globalized

societies. This gives rise to the need for cooperation and the sharing of security intelligence

between Member States. This article presents a critical review of the functioning of the

intelligence community in the European Union (EU), making a historical review that allows us

to understand whether or not transnational cooperation has been moving towards greater

integration. In addition to mapping the organisms that are part of this community, the article

relies on a theoretical framework of policy analysis to structure the challenges of intelligence

sharing on the European level.

It is argued that the EU's capacity to produce its own security intelligence is very low,

depending on the sharing of intelligence by the national agencies. Additionally, it is said that

the sharing of police intelligence is much more structured than the sharing of security

intelligence. Finally, it is concluded that the European intelligence community welcomes

different intelligence cultures within it and focuses its activities on diffuse cooperation that

faces the limits of national sovereignty, interoperability deficits, and difficulties in establishing

institutional relationships of trust.

Keywords

Intelligence, security, cooperation, intelligence cultures, European Union.

How to cite this article

Estevens, João (2020). "Building intelligence cooperation in the European Union". In

Janus.net, e-journal of international relations. Vol. 11, No. 2 Consulted [online] at date of last

visit, DOI: https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-7251.11.2.6

Article received on April 7, 2020 and accepted for publication on September 22, 2020

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e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 11, Nº. 2 (November 2020-April 2021), pp. 90-105

Building Intelligence Cooperation in the European Union

João Estevens

BUILDING INTELLIGENCE COOPERATION

IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

JOÃO ESTEVENS

Introduction

According to Article 4 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), it is clear that “It shall

respect their essential State functions, including ensuring the territorial integrity of the

State, maintaining law and order and safeguarding national security. In particular,

national security remains the sole responsibility of each Member State”. Article 73 of the

Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) also reiterates the role of

Member States in the implementation of their national security policies: “It shall be open

to Member States to organise between themselves and under their responsibility such

forms of cooperation and coordination as they deem appropriate between the competent

departments of their administrations responsible for safeguarding national security.”.

This legal framework is important for the achievement of intergovernmental security in

the EU, from which the practices of cooperation between intelligence services and

agencies emerge. As argued by Aden (2018), cooperation in the European intelligence

community is much more formal and structured in terms of police cooperation than

between intelligence agencies, mainly due to a legal framework for police cooperation in

terms of European regulation, with successive efforts to integrate into the revisions

introduced by the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Lisbon Treaties. Even so, the Treaty of

Lisbon, despite extending the EU's area of action in security matters, maintained the

principles of intergovernmentalism, first and foremost the unanimous decisions of the

Council and the possibility of brake mechanisms (Brandão, 2010: 60).

The difficulties are greater when it comes to concrete and operational action, despite the

fact that we see presidents and prime ministers signing treaties, publicly expressing the

need for cooperation between Member States to tackle common threats, or supporting

symbolic documents such as the European Security Strategy (Cross, 2011:76). However,

the security context in the EU has changed somewhat as a result of the various terrorist

attacks, highlighting the need for greater sharing of security intelligence between

Member States (Costa, 2016: 91). Additionally, the UK's exit from the EU requires a

reorganization of the Union's intelligence community (Glees, 2017; Hillebrand, 2017;

Segell, 2017). Thus, although European security has been following a path of progressive

integration in central matters of national sovereignty - terrorism, human and drug

trafficking, cybercrime, border control - blurring some divisions between the internal and

Article translated by Cláudia Tavares.

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João Estevens

external frontiers and accepting partial EU governance in these areas (Cross, 2011),

though cooperation in sharing security intelligence remains complex and volatile

(Gruszczak, 2016: 271).

Intelligence studies as a field is still under construction and has developed mainly in the

English-speaking context, advancing theoretically from disciplinary frameworks of Law,

History, Political Science and International Relations (Gill and Phytian, 2018). There are

many definitions of strategic intelligence, some more restrictive that limit them to a

process that feeds national security, others more comprehensive that perceive

intelligence as the product of a process that generates knowledge to feed strategic

decision with interest and relevance in different areas (Gill and Phytian, 2006).

Conceptually, it is necessary to distinguish between security intelligence and police

intelligence. The former has a strategic character, offering an understanding that

contributes to decisions, policies, and resource management to achieve long-term

objectives in order to guarantee national security. The latter are geared towards internal

security, particularly with regard to the prevention of violent crime and incidents in the

public space and may also fall within the sphere of criminal investigation (Moleirinho,

2009: 82). In the context of this article, strategic security intelligence is considered as

an essential element of national security and defence systems but is conceived in a way

that is disseminated among the Member States (Coqc, 2017). Globalization has brought

a broad understanding of national security, which now includes concerns about many

transnational risks, in addition to the traditional political-military threats (Buzan, 1991;

Hough, 2004; Williams, 2008; Kaldor and Rangelov, 2014), having demanded a broader

intervention of intelligence. However, the globalization of intelligence services has not

been so fast, and they remain mainly within national jurisdictions (Aldrich, 2009). There

are many intelligence agencies without the capacity to collect and analyze all the

available intelligence, first of all because they are not endowed with sufficient resources,

unlike countries with "big schools" of intel like USA, Russia, United Kingdom, Israel or

China. The cooperative practices among intelligence communities are the solution and

happen both at the national level - with other security forces and services - and at the

international level - with similar services. International cooperation is mostly bilateral

and takes place on the basis of common interests, shared intelligence cultures, historical

alliances, or geographical and strategic proximity to different regions of the world

(Rudner, 2004; Aldrich, 2009).

It is within the above context that it is important to assess the way in which security

intelligence is organized within the EU. This article is an exploratory research and takes

the form of a predominantly descriptive essay, which aims to answer three fundamental

questions: (1) What bodies and mechanisms exist for intelligence cooperation in the EU?;

(2) What are the challenges for greater cooperation?; and (3) What role the EU could

assume in this process? The structure of the article follows the guiding questions, there

being three sections, the first identifying the bodies involved in the process and how, the

second presenting a model for analyzing the challenges facing cooperation in intelligence,

and a third section pointing out possible courses of action for the EU. Methodologically,

the first section follows a comprehensive approach of the literature to map the existing

intelligence community as well as its evolution; the second part of Goodin and Tilly's

contribution (2006) in political analysis to introduce a model that allows to analyze and

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João Estevens

structure the challenges faced in different dimensions; finally, the third section relates

the two previous ones, in order to consider the role and positioning of the EU in this

process, following here an institutional approach. It is considered that the contribution of

this article derives, mainly, from the systematization of intelligence about a little explored

theme in the field of social sciences.

The argument put forward here is that there is a non-integrated and fragmented

European intelligence system, which depends heavily on the production and management

of intelligence by the national intelligence agencies of the Member States, pointing to an

EU intelligence community where national interests prevail and where different

intelligence cultures coexist. In this way, it is a system where some overlaps and

difficulties in sharing intelligence are noted, and weaknesses in the EU's position are also

identified, since the cooperation needed to face many risks and threats going beyond the

limits of the Union and even Europe. At the same time, the required action is mostly

local or national, placing the regional level in an ambiguous zone for the operations of

the EU intelligence community. Thus, its future seems to depend on the institutional

evolution of the community project itself and on a possible deepening of integration in

matters of national security and defense, as well as on the intensity and territorial

expansion of the main shared threat of the various national security systems: terrorism.

Without further integration of Member States' national security on an EU scale - EU

internal security - it will be impossible to think of a common intelligence system.

Nevertheless, cooperation and intelligence sharing (especially of the police) within the

European intelligence community will continue to be developed, with positive

contributions to the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common

Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), even if they face some challenges, such as the limits

of national sovereignty, interoperability deficits and the establishment of institutional

relations of trust within and outside the EU area.

Cooperation and intelligence in the EU: the supranational bodies

Intelligence development in the EU has progressed at a slow pace, although relative

progress in pan-European cooperation after September 11 and March 11 is recognized

(Argomaniz, 2009) and, currently, after the successive terrorist attacks, in particular that

of Paris (2015). However, the production of intelligence remained centered on the

national dimension rather than the EU dimension, turning the EU intelligence community

into a project of cooperation and intelligence sharing between national services and

agencies, which is based mainly on a counter-terrorism strategy (Rudner, 2004;

Argomaniz, 2015; Den Boer, 2015). The European Union's Global Strategy 2016

highlighted the need for greater intelligence sharing and cooperation between Member

States and EU security agencies in counter-terrorism activities, as well as a strengthening

of intelligence production by the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre (IntCen), fed by

cooperation with EU agencies such as Europol and Eurojust (European Union, 2016).

There has been a framework for cooperation in the EU with gradual increases in

intelligence sharing and police cooperation with a particular focus on issues of violent

radicalization, terrorism and transnational crime (Feiteira, 2016: 286), also impacting on

the objectives set by the CFSP and CSDP.

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Intelligence sharing is led by the Member States on a voluntary basis, which allows for

variations in its intensity and modalities, namely in terms of not compromising privileged

relations of some agencies and intelligence services with other partners outside the EU

area (Walsh, 2008). Also, there is some mistrust regarding the quality of intelligence

produced by some services due to the dissemination of the collection and analysis

techniques that serve as a basis for the production of intelligence (Politi, 1998: 12;

Grusczak, 2016: 84). Trust is assumed to be the basic principle of cooperation, but there

are several challenges to establishing relationships of trust, primarily due to the secret

nature of intelligence production. Thus, cooperation on intelligence tends to focus on

issues such as cyber security, international terrorism and transnational organized crime

(Bilgi, 2016: 59) and to occur in the following bodies.

Club of Bern

It is a forum for informal and voluntary sharing of intelligence between services of

different countries, created in the seventies of the last century, generally meeting every

two years. Currently, all EU countries as well as Norway and Switzerland are members.

It is considered to be one of the main platforms for meetings between the leaders of

national intelligence services. Its agenda focuses on the holding of meetings and

conferences, where technical and operational issues of activities carried out by national

intelligence services are discussed. More recently, working groups have been set up in

the field of counter-terrorism and the fight against transnational organized crime, which

have led to the creation of the Counter Terrorism Group (CTG), in 2001. This group

includes the US and produces terrorist threat assessment reports, which are shared not

only between Member States but also with the Council of the European Union. It should

be noted, however, that this group operates outside the institutional framework of the

Union despite its rapprochement with it in the last decade, and there is no obligation on

the relevance and quality of the intelligence provided by the national intelligence services

(Walsh, 2006: 631).

European Police Office (Europol)

Like the Club of Bern, also in the sphere of police cooperation, an informal forum for

sharing intelligence was created which brought together several European countries in

the seventies, namely the Trevi Group. This was made up of a group of ministers and

senior officials from the Ministries of Justice and Home Affairs of the Member States,

often understood as a forum which fostered the creation of the EU Area of Freedom,

Security and Justice, enshrined in the Amsterdam Treaty. Europol came into operation in

1999 with units representing all Member States, which are responsible for mediating

between national security forces and services and Europol. The sharing of intelligence

from national offices derives from their own initiative or from replies to questions put to

national offices by Europol (Bilgi, 2016: 58). It is a fundamental structure of EU security,

supporting operations on the ground and acting as a platform for intelligence on police-

criminal matters. Its main areas of activity are the fight against threats from terrorism,

transnational drug trafficking and money laundering networks, counterfeiting of currency

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and fraud, and human trafficking. In recent years, Europol's role has been growing and

its areas of intervention expanded, becoming a key body in the fight against crime at

European level (Rozée et al., 2013). In 2015, the European Counterterrorism Centre was

created (European Counter Terrorism Centre - ECTC), following the attacks in Paris in

November 2015, which has been in operation since the beginning of 2016. Also in 2016,

the European Centre for Migrant Trafficking was created (European Migrant Smuggling

Centre - EMSC), which comes after this issue has been identified as one of the major

challenges in the European Agenda for Migration 2015. This center works closely with

other Union agencies such as Eurojust in the field of judicial cooperation and Frontex in

the protection of external borders. Although a number of criticisms against Europol in

terms of transparency and accountability have been pointed out (Jansson, 2016), the

production and open dissemination of an annual report is worth noting, the Europol

Review, which reports on its activities and the results achieved and also contains specific

intelligence on the types of functionalities and systems available to Europol from which

it provides coordinated support to police operations in the EU.

Standing Committee for Operational Cooperation on Internal Security (COSI)

Another body contributing to intelligence sharing is the Standing Committee on

Operational Cooperation on Internal Security (COSI), set up on the basis of Article 71 of

the TFEU to ensure that operational cooperation on internal security is promoted and

strengthened within the Union. To this end, it promotes the coordination of action by the

competent authorities of the Member States by ensuring effective operational

cooperation in the field of EU internal security, including law enforcement, border control

and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. It also assesses the overall direction and

effectiveness of operational cooperation and assists the Council in responding to terrorist

attacks or natural disasters. However, once again, it is not an operational body with

autonomy to conduct operations, nor to intervene in the legislative process (Caldas,

2016: 63). It is made up of representatives of the Member States, supported by the JHA

advisers of the Permanent Representations, and regularly informs the European

Parliament and the national parliaments of its work. Representatives of other bodies

involved in internal security, such as Europol, Eurojust and Frontex, frequently attend

COSI meetings.

INTCEN

The Intelligence and Situation Center of the European Union (Intelligence Analysis Centre

– IntCen) exists under different names since 1999, being integrated into the European

External Action Service (EEAS) in 2010, operating daily and uninterruptedly. Its mission

is confined to the provision and analysis of intelligence, in particular early warning and

assessment of events which may have an impact on EU institutions and Member States,

in the fields of security, defense and counter-terrorism. It acts as an entry channel for

classified intelligence into the EU from Member States' civilian intelligence services and

agencies, much of its analysis being based on intelligence provided by national

intelligence services and agencies, national military authorities and diplomats in EU

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Delegations. Although not all Member States can contribute to the production of

intelligence, all will have access to the intelligence produced by IntCen. When sharing

intelligence originating from the national services for the IntCen, the former can define

that other actors can access that intelligence in addition to the main consumers of the

intelligence disseminated by the IntCen. That is, according to the principle of the origin

of intelligence, that which comes from national services can be denied to MEPs, for

example (Cross, 2013: 393). Its operational contribution extends, for example, to the

provision of intelligence on the destinations, reasons, and circuits of movement of

terrorists within and outside EU territory. In 2007, the capacity of the IntCen to analyze

situations outside the EU was strengthened through the creation of the Individual

Analysis Capability (ISAC), which crosses civilian intelligence with that obtained by the

Intelligence Division of the EU Military Staff, issuing early warning intelligence, crisis

response planning, and assessments of CFSP operations and exercises (Caldas, 2016:

64-65).

It is a body that produces intelligence in support of the policy-maker, in particular

directed at the EEAS, but also assisting the Presidencies of the Council and the European

Commission, while contributing to the CFSP and the CSDP, derived from its analyses

responding to threats from terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and

other risks and threats of a global nature. Nevertheless, it is a body that also intervenes

in the collection of intelligence, mainly from open sources (Open Source Intelligence -

OSINT) and residually by direct and face-to-face observation in crisis scenarios (Human

Intelligence - HUMINT), producing intelligence that would not otherwise exist. In this

way, the product of the IntCen intelligence combines its own collection, mainly using

OSINT, with the analysis of intelligence shared by the Member States, both civil and

military, and diplomatic reports (Gruszczak, 2016: 86). The product of IntCen's

intelligence is effective through the production of biannual reports, special reports (in

response to crisis situations or in an area of growing relevance at a given time),

summaries of support to the policy maker when requested and risk assessments, also

biannual, to which ad-hoc briefings with the EU institutions may be added when relevant.

IntCen is not a European intelligence agency, but it is the closest to it and has been a

key player in coordinating and centralizing intelligence cooperation at European level and

has gradually established itself as a producer of safety intelligence. As such, it is a key

body (as producer and consumer of intelligence) in the EU intelligence community (Cross,

2013: 395) and has assumed a growing role in European foreign policy over the past

decade (Fagersten, 2014: 97).

European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen)

As such, it is a key body (as producer and consumer of intelligence) in the EU intelligence

community (Cross, 2013: 395) and has assumed a growing role in European foreign

policy over the past decade (IMINT e GEOINT). It assumes itself as a military intelligence

body, developing its activities jointly with other partners such as the European Defence

Agency (European Defence Agency - EDA) and the European Space Agency (European

Space Agency - ESA). The main consumers of SatCen's products and services are, in

addition to the Member States, the EEAS, the European Commission, Frontex, and other

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EU institutions and agencies. Although GEOINT is particularly associated with the Armed

Forces, the truth is that there is a growing interest in the civil sphere, both for the public

and private sectors. The GEOINT produced by SatCen is mainly intended to collaborate

in humanitarian aid programs and missions, in contingency plans in crisis situations, in

the areas of border control, combating piracy to terrorist and organized crime networks,

supporting video surveillance networks, identifying military capabilities, controlling the

non-proliferation of chemical weapons and mass destruction, and supporting critical

infrastructure, including risk and vulnerability assessments. Note that the center does

not have its own satellites, so it uses the existing satellite images, often proceeding to

purchase them, for later analysts to perform the treatment of them. So: (1) on the one

hand SatCen does not command existing satellites, neither in their tasks, nor in their

positions; and (2) much less can it control the quality of the material collected, with

private satellites for commercial use often having lower resolution image collection than

could be needed for SatCen evaluation (Walsh, 2006: 636).

European Union Military Staff (EUMS))

The Military Staff of the European Union, like the Military Committee, was a consequence

of the Helsinki European Council (1999), which opened space for the establishment of

permanent political-military bodies, and was subsequently established in 2001, and since

2010 integrated into the structure of the EEAS. It is the only permanently integrated

military structure in the Union, bringing together a wide range of experts, who use the

contribution of military intelligence to the elaboration of the PCSD. Its functions include,

on the one hand, advising on matters of a military nature and, on the other hand,

planning, evaluating, and issuing recommendations on matters relating to crisis

management situations and the definition of military strategy. To cope with this mission,

the EUMS benefits from an Intelligence Division, which uses military intelligence produced

by Member States and other European bodies, to subsequently produce reports and

assessments for the Military Committee, the EEAS and other EU bodies (Walsh, 2006:

633). The Military Staff shall also monitor the management of ongoing operations and

the military capabilities made available by the Member States to the EU, identifying which

(inter)national forces may be deployed for operations conducted by the Union (Caldas,

2016: 66).

The challenges of cooperation: formal obstacles and ambiguities

National intelligence services and agencies have different intelligence cultures and

asymmetric resources, causing within the EU itself heterogeneous intelligence production

processes between agencies and bodies. With the growing expansion of the Internet,

there are estimates that place the collection of intelligence largely dependent on OSINT,

which proves to be a less complex, expensive and time-consuming way to do it when

compared to other forms of secret collection such as HUMINT (Omand, Bartlett and Miller,

2012). As far as intelligence sharing is concerned, recent efforts highlight a paradigm

shift, which relates to strengthening cooperative security in the EU. Due to the expansion

of national security agendas, it is impossible for small services to produce intelligence, in

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quantity and quality, keeping their budgets unchanged. Thus, cooperation allows, on the

one hand, the maximization of existing resources, avoiding, on the other hand, the

overlapping of missions in operational terms (Gruszczak, 2016: 88-89). From a security

point of view, the existence of shared risks and threats in the EU area encourages

cooperation and a common agenda, as in the case of counter-terrorism. Still, intelligence

sharing has sometimes benefited the EU's decision-making process more than the

effectiveness of a common counterterrorism strategy. This is because shared intelligence

has primarily fuelled European counterterrorism policies, with recurrent low operational

and tactical impact, areas where intelligence (operational and tactical) tends to remain

at the national level (Muller-Wille, 2008: 69). Although cooperation allows economic and

security gains, it also has an internal origin, which is determined by the nature of the

European integration process itself, marked by successive spillover effects. The

introduction of cooperation policies in security matters has determined cooperation in

adjacent areas, where the growing cooperation in intelligence with the development of

the CFSP is included (Fagersten, 2014: 103). However, cooperative practices face

obstacles in different areas, proposing below an exploratory model that systematizes the

dimensions and determinants of cooperation from the grouping of large contextual

domains that may affect a political phenomenon (Goodin and Tilly, 2006). Briefly, we can

frame the challenges of sharing security intelligence in five major dimensions: cultural,

security, legal, economic, and psychological.

Cultural dimension: different intelligence cultures

Cooperation tends to be easier when similar intelligence cultures exist, and more difficult

to achieve when intelligence cultures are substantially different between the countries

concerned (Born et al., 2015: 110). The intelligence culture depends on how the

intelligence communities legally register within the Member States and develop their

practices, with repercussions on different institutional designs, different articulations

between civil-military intelligence, different governmental guardianships, different

contributions to the internal security and national defense systems, or different

mechanisms of oversight, democratic control and transparency. Taking into account EU

countries, it is assumed that there are distinct intelligence cultures, which derive from a

differentiated political and cultural history among Member States, from which

divergences have emerged in the legal environments and political systems in which the

national intelligence communities operate (Graaf and Nyce, 2016).

Security dimension: the globalization of security

There are many interdependencies between environmental or public health risks, or

threats such as cybercrime or terrorism, for example, which require broader cooperation,

first and foremost including the US, and not restricted to Member States. At the

operational level, missions and operations have mainly taken place at the national and

local levels, or come from NATO, with the Union at an intermediate level, where shared

problems are often circumstantial and the capacity to intervene limited. The challenge is

then to find common goals, and action on cybercrime, counter-terrorism and combating

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human trafficking networks can be mentioned as challenges that currently unite all the

Member States, although on a scale of differentiated concern that is insufficient to

establish structured and broad cooperation in the long term. For effective intelligence

sharing within the EU, it is essential to formulate a collective security agenda that can

link the actions of Member States and their national intelligence services and agencies

around common interests.

Legal dimension: the Lisbon Treaty

The Treaty of Lisbon has led to an increase in IntCen's competencies and strategic

relevance. However, it cannot be ignored that the same Treaty has clearly inscribed the

responsibility of the Member States to ensure national security. Thus, this is an exclusive

competence of the Member States, where they maintain reserves of sovereignty, making

cooperation on security matters and, in particular, on issues associated with the sharing

of intelligence between intelligence services take place in an unstructured manner and,

preferably, with partner services. As a result, the EU's powers to act in intelligence

production or to require and coordinate intelligence sharing are still very limited, despite

the increase in the number of European bodies that are part of the European intelligence

community over the past two decades. The Lisbon Treaty presents itself as an instrument

of formal-legal blockage, which makes it impossible to achieve more integrated

cooperation, the development of networks and centralized intelligence sharing channels

in the EU, and greater harmonization of collection methods and intelligence analysis

techniques. A revision of this legal framework could speed up greater interoperability,

correcting some of the difficulties experienced in sharing intelligence within the European

intelligence community and bringing about efficiency gains.

Economic dimension: the expansion of the intelligence market

The importance of intelligence at the national level has today a wider spectrum,

consecrating a performance in different sectors that serve national interests. It follows

that the work agendas of national intelligence services and agencies present some

elements that are shared, but that go far beyond those elements. National intelligence

services and agencies operate in an expanding and very competitive market, and there

are several situations where Member States compete for strategic intelligence that can

help different national governments in their decision-making processes (Rêgo, 2015).

There seems to be a dual system, where there are areas where Member States'

intelligence services and agencies cooperate and others where they compete. For

example, both economic intelligence (support for government negotiations, economic

counterintelligence actions, support for national business strategies, etc.) and energy

intelligence are areas where national strategic interests are recurrently conflicting, and

where national intelligence services and agencies face a competitive environment. This

constant competition does not favor the broad, open and continued long-term

cooperation that is desired in the EU.

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100

Psychological dimension: the principle of trust

One of the fundamental dimensions of cooperation is trust, expressed through

uncertainty about what other services and analysts can do with the intelligence received,

the possible negative impact on already existing historical partnerships for bilateral

cooperation, or the risk of ‘free-rider’ (Muller-Wille, 2008: 62). How can a fair sharing of

responsibilities and resources between Member States be ensured to avoid distrust? How

can standards be set in the collection and analysis of intelligence so that national services

and agencies rely on intelligence produced externally? How to ensure the security of

intelligence shared in smaller, less resourceful centers? How to keep communication

channels permanently open, which foster interpersonal relationships of trust, and not

only occasional relationships in crisis situations? These are some central questions whose

answers have been characterized by volatility and uncertainty, which has created

difficulties in stimulating the desired relationships of trust. This may understand the

preference of Member States for bilateral intelligence sharing with intelligence services

and agencies with which the principle of trust is assumed to exist, as opposed to broad

multilateral action in the EU. Trust is the determining element for the success of

intelligence sharing, but it needs time to develop, through recognition of the mutual

benefits achieved in joint initiatives, as opposed to creating a formal model of

cooperation.

The role of the EU: status quo or greater autonomy?

The transfer of competence in the production of security intelligence to Brussels does not

seem possible soon, ceteris paribus. Nevertheless, the lack of full integration of

intelligence in the bureaucratic apparatus of the Union does not invalidate the expected

deepening of the security intelligence community in the EU. The development of this

community points to the development of a broad and flexible network, which makes the

EU and the Member States jointly responsible for the production and sharing of

intelligence within the Union. As Alessandro Politi (1998: 8) wrote in one of the first

reference texts on intelligence in the EU context, there may not be great advantages in

over formalizing the European intelligence community, as the flexibility of a network can

ensure greater efficiency in managing the necessary cooperation and intelligence sharing,

instead of trying to engage in the creation of a European intelligence culture alternative

to the national ones. If, in part, this argument can still hold water, it seems to have lost

momentum as a result of the enormous expansion of international terrorism, pointing to

several problems over a complex and insufficient intelligence network where cooperation

is diffuse, takes place at different levels, and does not present standard procedures and

practices (Argomaniz, 2015). Despite the effective gains from intelligence sharing in the

field of police cooperation, the integration of intelligence sharing between intelligence

services and agencies in the community area has been slower, revealing a preference of

national governments (i) for informal initiatives as opposed to formal regulation, (ii) by

sharing with a small number of actors rather than broad sharing at Union level, and (iii)

by establishing ad hoc practices as an alternative to institutional solutions (Gruszczak,

2016: 217 and 272). The role of the EU will depend on its positioning in three areas,

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namely defining its participation in the intelligence cycle, its effectiveness in managing

and coordinating intelligence sharing and its ability to drive greater interoperability.

Its participation in the collection of intelligence using its own means will require more of

the EU and its relationship with the Member States, as opposed to a circumscription to

the phases of analysis and dissemination of intelligence from the national services, firstly

because the collection and its legal limits are an area more sensitive to national legal

cultures, which vary between the Member States. Although the importance of HUMINT

and SIGINT is recognized, there are many possibilities for the collection of intelligence to

happen from OSINT, which has held the preference of European bodies that produce

intelligence, especially as its value increases with the expansion of digital communication

tools. The collection through own means does not invalidate the processing of intelligence

from national services and agencies. Even so, the joint action involves two challenges:

(1) avoid overlapping analyses and (2) ensure the added value of intelligence produced

from the EU. The duplication of analyses, the excess of analyses and the growing

bureaucratization of processes and procedures will hardly be perceived as an added value

for Member States. By contrast, a direct, flexible and stable networked system, with

access to intelligence that is more difficult for national services and agencies to obtain,

could lead to the recognition of a favorable contribution from the EU and their greater

participation in the European intelligence community. This horizontal network with

several bridges for cooperation, rather than a formal hierarchical model, can foster trust

and avoid additional conflicts in the relationship of Member States with their own

integration processes.

In relation to cooperation, the European intelligence community needs to be further

deepened, articulated and centralized, and it is also essential to ensure the relevance of

shared security intelligence at the multilateral level. An EU-led system of cooperation

could diminish the preference for bilateral cooperation, without an obligation for

multilateral sharing, and there could be a model for cluster cooperation according to

interests shared by Member States but coordinated by the EU. This flexible sharing by

clusters and by areas would even allow cooperation to be extended beyond the borders

of the EU, to countries with a historical relevance such as the United Kingdom and the

US, as well as to countries with a very high geostrategic interest in certain areas, such

as Turkey or Morocco, for example, or even within the institutional framework of

collective security with NATO. Obviously, greater circulation of and access to intelligence

presupposes the strengthening of the security of existing communication channels and

data centers where they would be stored, as well as the definition of the conditions of

such access by the security forces and services of the Member States and other actors.

The poor interoperability in the European intelligence community is one of its main

limitations, and it is necessary to make compatible solutions between Member States in

terms of the legal environments where intel is collected, the infrastructures, the

techniques and methodologies of intelligence analysis and processing, and the sharing of

technology (necessary both in the collection techniques and in the security of the

channels of intelligence dissemination). All this would also contribute to greater

harmonization of the different intelligence cultures living together in Europe and could

have a positive impact on relations of greater trust between the Member States,

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promoting cooperation. This harmonization could also have positive effects in terms of

democratic control, transparency and the management of the binomial security and

freedom, by reconciling access to (meta)data with the protection of rights, freedoms and

guarantees, on which the Member States have different positions.

Conclusion

This article shows that the EU intelligence community is substantially different from the

national communities we know, which is not surprising given the prevalence of nationality

in the sharing of security intelligence between intelligence services and agencies in the

EU. The national security of the Member States is not yet fully represented in the internal

security of the Union, thus including greater cooperation in the sharing of police

intelligence. The sharing of security intelligence is more like an open network, where

different ways of producing, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence live together.

Security intelligence is configured as the last stronghold of national sovereignty that

Member States make use of, making the European intelligence community's dependence

on Member States very high. This community acts at national level, with the different

national intelligence agencies, and at European level, through the different bodies

involved in the production and sharing of intelligence, from which various EU bodies and

institutions as well as Member States benefit.

Although the creation of a European intelligence agency in the current context seems

impossible today, the strengthening of sharing seems to be one of the ways to go,

contributing to the maximization of existing resources and to the development of

epistemic communities. Moreover, the advantages of cooperation in terms of saving

resources - in a context of budgetary constraints for many small services and national

intelligence agencies - and producing intelligence in scale economies are difficult to deny.

It is also necessary for the EU to assert its own capacity for collection and analysis -

especially from the IntCen and using OSINT - from which a growing contribution to the

CFSP and the CSDP is expected and thus in the formulation of the whole EU geostrategic

vision. The future of security intelligence in the EU seems to depend, on the one hand,

on the further integration of common security and defense issues and, on the other hand,

on the advancement of common threats to such as terrorism. Nevertheless, it is

important to ensure that any further centralization, analysis, dissemination and, above

all, intelligence sharing do not compromise the autonomy of the Member States and do

not violate the principles of action of the several actors involved in the EU intelligence

community. Finally, the EU's position on this issue also reflects the way it intends to

project itself into the international system, perhaps forcing it to revisit the current

cohesion of the transatlantic relationship and the historic EU-NATO relations in security

and defense matters.

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