Intelligence agencies across Europe are putting aside decades of mistrust and beginning to build a shared intelligence operation to counter Russian aggression, a move accelerated by the new American capriciousness in supporting its traditional allies, writes "Politico".
In the last year, many European countries have appointed intelligence officials to their missions in Brussels. The European Union's domestic intelligence unit has begun briefing senior officials. And the bloc is toying with the idea of building a more powerful CIA-like force, something long thought unthinkable.
The push for deeper intelligence cooperation has accelerated sharply since the Trump administration abruptly halted military intelligence sharing with Kiev in March.
Donald Trump “deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing Europe’s intelligence agencies together,” a Western intelligence official said.
Seven intelligence and security officials described to Politico how the breakdown in transatlantic trust is forcing European spy agencies to act faster — and closer — than ever before.
It’s all part of a larger rethinking of practices. European intelligence agencies have also begun to more carefully review how they share information with their American counterparts. The Dutch military and civilian intelligence services said on Saturday they had stopped sharing certain information with their American counterparts, citing political interference and human rights concerns.
Officials fear that transatlantic forums, including NATO, will become less reliable platforms for sharing intelligence. "There is a sense that in the coming months there may be less commitment from the United States in sharing the intelligence they have - both within NATO and generally," said Antonio Missiroli, a former assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges at NATO.
The security services are still overcoming decades-old trust issues. New revelations that Hungarian intelligence officers disguised as diplomats tried to infiltrate EU institutions show how closely European governments still monitor each other.
To address distrust, some leading intelligence agencies are pushing for the creation of trusted groups of countries, rather than running things through Brussels.
The Berne Club
Unlike close-knit spy alliances like the "Five Eyes", European Union member states have long struggled to build strong partnerships for intelligence sharing. National security remains firmly in the hands of their respective capitals, with Brussels playing only a coordinating role.
One way European services have traditionally communicated is through a secret network known as the Berne Club, created nearly 50 years ago in the Swiss city that bears its name. The club has no headquarters, no secretariat and meets only twice a year.
In recent years, the group has coordinated its meetings to roughly coincide with the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. But the club is hardly a mirror image of the EU. Malta has never joined, Bulgaria only recently joined, and Austria was suspended for a time over concerns it was too soft on Moscow, before being readmitted in 2022. Non-EU countries such as Switzerland, Norway and the United Kingdom are also members.
"The Berne Club is an information-sharing architecture similar to Europol. It is designed to share a specific type of information for a specific function," explained Philip Davies, director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies in London. "However, it is quite limited and the information that is shared is potentially quite harmless because you are not connecting to protected systems and there are national restrictions."
The European Union's main intelligence players - France, the Netherlands, Germany and, until 2019, Britain - saw little point in sharing sensitive information with all EU countries due to concerns that it could fall into the wrong hands.
Eastern European services, such as those in Bulgaria, are believed to be full of Russian moles, Missiroli noted. However, a Bulgarian security official argues that this is no longer the case, as the old guard has largely retired.
While offering some avenues for cooperation, the Berne Club has left EU officials in Brussels largely in the dark. "The problem with the talk of European intelligence sharing is that European intelligence sharing is not the same as EU intelligence sharing," Davis said.
A call to the EU
Recent geopolitical developments have forced the European Union to rethink its approach. Former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö last year called for the EU to create a CIA-style agency coordinated from Brussels in a landmark preparedness report requested by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Niinistö outlined the idea of a "fully-fledged intelligence cooperation service at EU level that can serve both strategic and operational needs", adding that a "counter-sabotage network" is needed to protect infrastructure.
If there is such a thing as a collective EU intelligence agency, the European Union's domestic Intelligence and Situation Centre (INTCEN) at the European External Action Service (EEAS) is the closest thing to it. The centre conducts analyses based on voluntary contributions from EU countries. Spies from national agencies are seconded to the center, which helps build ties with national intelligence.
Croatian intelligence chief Daniel Markic took over as head of INTCEN in September 2024 with a mission to strengthen information exchange with the agency and provide direct intelligence to EU leaders such as von der Leyen and foreign policy chief Kaia Kallas.
Together with their military counterpart — the EU Military Intelligence Directorate — the two services form the Single Intelligence Analysis Capability (SIAC), which produces shared intelligence analyses for EU decision-makers. In April, SIAC held its annual meeting in Brussels, this time attracting senior officials from European agencies, as well as Kallas.
At the meeting, intelligence chiefs highlighted Europe’s growing desire to build its own independent intelligence capabilities. But some feared that overemphasizing the need for autonomy could further weaken ties with the US and create the very gaps that Europe is trying to avoid.
Trust issues
Brussels is slowly but surely building its own intelligence community. For example, intelligence liaison officers already exist in most EU member states’ permanent representations in Brussels.
Belgian security services, which are officially tasked with monitoring spying around EU institutions in Brussels, have briefed members of the European Parliament on tactics used to coerce lawmakers into foreign espionage.
However, a European intelligence source said that while cooperation between EU countries was “at its best in modern history,” the agencies still worked primarily for their own national governments.
This is a key stumbling block. According to Robert Gorelick, the retired head of the US CIA mission in Italy, "the reason why there can be no EU-wide intelligence service is because there is too much diversity in the way national agencies operate". Moreover, he added: "There are too many countries - 27 - to have that kind of trust in sharing".
Some countries have tended to create smaller ad hoc groups. After the US stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine in March, a Coalition of the Willing, led by France and the UK, met in Paris and agreed to expand Kiev's access to European-run intelligence, surveillance technology and satellite data.
The Netherlands is considering stepping up cooperation with other European services, such as the UK, Poland, France, Germany and the Nordic countries, including sharing raw data. "It has increased significantly", confirmed Erik Akerboom, the head of the Dutch civil intelligence service.
Yet, there is still a long way to go to build sufficient trust between the 27 EU members with different national priorities. Earlier this month, it was revealed that Hungarian intelligence officers disguised as diplomats had tried to infiltrate EU institutions while Oliver Várhelyi (now a European commissioner) was Hungary's ambassador to the bloc, and had placed Orbán's cronies in key positions.
Niinistö, who wrote the EU's readiness report last year, said that a fully-fledged EU intelligence agency remained "a question of the future".
He added: "When we talk about readiness, it comes down to the word "trust" because without trust we can't cooperate much".