A spike in terrorist attacks in Europe over the past couple of years has reignited the debate over how to improve European intelligence collection and sharing.
The ISIS-claimed terror shooting in Paris last week, which left one police officer dead and at least two others wounded, is just the latest example in a string of terrorist incidents on the continent. The London attack in March that killed a handful of people and left dozens injured, the incident in Nice last July when a terrorist drove a truck through the city’s streets mowing down pedestrians and leaving more than 80 people dead and scores injured, and the Brussels attack last spring that killed more than 30 people exemplify the magnitude of the problem confronting Europe.
How can Europe get ahead of the curve and thwart attacks like these before they happen? The way European intelligence is structured makes the answer to that question difficult.
European intelligence is gathered and collated by primarily three means: individual nation states, the European Union (EU), and NATO. In addition, Europol and Frontex, which are responsible for combatting organized crime and conducting border patrol, utilize strategic intelligence. Intelligence institutions like Club de Berne, an intel-sharing forum between the EU’s 28 member states’ intelligence services and Norway and Switzerland, allow for voluntary intelligence sharing and discussion of intelligence matters. Bilateral and multilateral intelligence arrangements are also prevalent among European nations.
To improve intelligence, Europe must first focus on enhancing collection done at the nation-state level. Some states, such as Belgium, do not have the resources and capabilities to build a highly advanced intelligence operation like the United Kingdom’s.
With Britain getting ready to leave the EU, there is concern EU intelligence will take a big hit. However, Nigel Inkster, the former Director of Operations and Intelligence at MI6 (Britain’s secret intelligence service), told The Cipher Brief, “when it comes to counterterrorism and security generally, the UK is seen as a very substantial net contributor to European security capabilities, and the Europeans will want to keep it that way.”
Inkster, who now works at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, added that the UK will want to continue working with EU intelligence units as long as they are perceived as “effective.”
But in a catch-22, EU intelligence is only as good as the intelligence provided by member states, because the EU acts as a collation mechanism that gets all of its information from its members’ intelligence services, both military and civilian (the EUMS Intelligence Directorate for the military side, and the Intelligence Center, or INTCEN, for the civilian side). If Britain stops providing intelligence to these centers and if “Frexit” – that is, France’s withdrawal from the EU – becomes a reality should Marine Le Pen win the presidency in the second round of elections on May 7, then the EU intelligence units will suffer.
NATO is in the same predicament: NATO’s Intelligence Division, under its International Military Staff, is also a collation mechanism, rather than a collection agency. Unlike the EU, NATO focuses on military, rather than strategic, intelligence.
“A lot of the intelligence that NATO deals with – or has been dealing with over the last decade – is of a tactical, military nature in relation to the deployment in Afghanistan, in particular, but also others,” said Inkster.
This could pose a major problem. Even though NATO does not yet have a direct role in anti-ISIL coalition efforts, it is expected to engage in more counterterrorism efforts in the coming years. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, former Deputy Secretary-General of NATO (2012-16), told The Cipher Brief, “there has been a lot of efforts by NATO, particularly since 9/11, to be more focused on countering terrorist threats … They [NATO members] could … use NATO more as a forum for assessing terrorist threats, exchanging analyses, and forging more of a common strategy against terrorism, which right now is largely done again outside of the NATO framework.”
Strategic intelligence sharing would be needed for NATO to take on a leading role in counterterror efforts, and there, said Inkster, “the main concern is the reluctance of the big intelligence powers to put sensitive data into the organization [NATO].”
Not only are individual NATO members hesitant to share their most valuable intelligence with their fellow NATO allies, but they also refuse to share this information with the EU intelligence units. There’s no formal arrangement to do this, which makes it difficult. And there’s also a huge lack of trust.
Brigadier General (Ret.) Jarosław Stróżyk, the former Polish Defense Attaché to Washington, who also served as the Deputy Director of the Intelligence Division in NATO’s International Military Staff, noted that “the dispute between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus” contributes to a lack of trust and a reluctance to share intelligence between NATO and the EU.
Turkey is a NATO member, but not an EU member; Greece is both; and Cyprus is a part of the EU, but not NATO.
“On the one hand, in the EU, Greece and Cyprus object to the exchange of information. In NATO, Turkey objects to the cooperation between those two,” Stróżyk told The Cipher Brief.
A “big-bang federal superstructure” of intelligence in Europe is not feasible, Inkster commented. But NATO and the EU could work with one another, and more closely with their member states, to paint a better picture of the threat landscape.
For example, Vershbow pointed out that the EU’s members “don’t have the infrastructure that would be needed to pass classified and threat information on a real-time basis,” however, “NATO does have mechanisms for sharing intelligence.”
“The [NATO] networks themselves could be used by the 22 members of NATO that are in the EU – and maybe extended to other EU countries that meet whatever security test – so that this information can be moved more readily, the way that the military information is moved now,” said Vershbow.
Still, progress on intelligence in Europe comes down to trust. And with Brexit on the horizon, a possible Le Pen presidency in France, rising authoritarian regimes in countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic, and terror attacks that increasingly seem to divide rather than unite the continent, trust is in short supply.
“The European Union has some … problems as we speak … so I don’t think there is now a mood for the real research and creation of something new,” said Stróżyk.
Kaitlin Lavinder is a reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @KaitLavinder.
