When Josep Borrell lamented last month that “the EU’s global diplomatic network was less informative than reading the paper”, he hit the nail on the head. Currently, the EU External Action Service has no intelligence collecting powers, relying totally on member states’ willingness to share. If we want the EU to be a global player, and stop acting blindly as we have seen in the past, we have to give it access to first-hand and credible intelligence information.
The Union needs a system for a continuous and automatic inflow of intelligence from its member states’ national intelligence services to the EU INTCEN/EEAS on foreign and security issues occurring outside the Union. Otherwise, the EU should create its own EU intelligence service.
The current EU Intelligence and Situation Centre (EU INTCEN) is an analysis centre that processes the information it receives by any means, including member states’ national services. The EU INTCEN is part of the Single Intelligence Analysis Capacity (SIAC), which combines civilian intelligence (EU INTCEN) and military intelligence (EUMS Intelligence Directorate). In this framework, both civilian and military contributions are used to produce all-source intelligence analyses, early warnings, and situational awareness.
However, neither the EU INTCEN nor the EUMS have intelligence collecting powers. At the end of the day, neither of them are intelligence services. The EU, especially in all its delegations, does not have intelligence agents operating or collecting this type of information on the ground. The EU relies on the intermittent, and sometimes self-interested, biased, and incomplete information that national services are willing to share for any reason.
The need for sufficient EU intelligence to effectively handle foreign and security crises abroad has been evidenced on several occasions, with hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan being probably the most spectacular one. But also in Ukraine. Before the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 also known as Maidan, all the signs that the EU disposed were pointing towards Yulia Timoshenko's release and Ukraine's drift towards the EU. However, we put the focus elsewhere. The EU's naivety was later depicted somehow in the infamous “Fuck the EU” by the US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland.
More recently, the EU did not want to believe that Putin would invade Ukraine, and the Union was reluctant to believe US warnings due to the precedent of the information on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We have misread the signals and pointed the spotlights in a different direction in several occasions.
The EU is missing an effective instrument, a necessary mechanism to keep us up to date, especially the High Representative of the EU as the person who shapes the standing of the EU on the global stage. Paraphrasing Josep Borrell, “we have to be much more on listening mode” as he needs to be the best informed person in the world, at least as much as any Foreign Affairs Minister on a 24-hours basis.
We cannot keep going blindly around the world. I am not talking about intelligence within the EU in terms of intelligence on terrorism, or a so-called “intelligence pool”. In the former, it is not open to debate. The competence is exclusively of member states’ national services and there is an existing closed network of intra-EU coordination. In the latter, national services cannot be asked to share hard-won information - possibly retrieved by taking risks of all kinds - with another 26 states.
The mechanism I refer to would comprise that member states would automatically and consistently send intelligence on foreign and security issues occurring outside the borders of the EU to the EEAS, where state competence over national security is not a limitation. I am talking about the intelligence that the EEAS holds when acting in foreign crises such as those mentioned, or in the Sahel, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar, among others, or concerning the nuclear deal with Iran. The Union must be able to rely on quality intelligence so as not to act blindly (again).
A first step in this direction could go through the strengthening of the EU INTCEN, and the newly created EEAS Crisis Response Centre, by enhancing its resources and capabilities in order to adapt them to this mechanism. Likewise, all EU services working on intelligence and/or with sensible information should enhance their security protocols. The EEAS should be the receiver of a continuous and constant flow of intelligence from member states’ national intelligence services.
Failing which, if that intelligence flow is not well-organised, the temptation will ultimately be to create an EU intelligence service, which will be costly and it will take many years to catch up with national services. The dilemma is as follows: either the flow to Brussels is structured, fluid, and useful, or (as in so many other aspects and policies) the EU needs to create its own service.
Nacho Sánchez Amor, Spanish MEP from the S&D group