November 4, 2024 by Joseph Fitsanakis
A HIGHLY ANTICIPATED REVIEW of the European Union’s intelligence readiness to face conventional and hybrid threats has called for the establishment of a dedicated Europe-wide intelligence agency. Such an agency must rely on EU member states “trusting each other” in order to confront increasingly aggressive espionage, sabotage, and other types of threats by outside actors like Russia, the report said.
Ursula von der Leyen, who presides over the EU’s powerful executive branch, known as the European Commission, assigned the review last March. It was led by Sauli Niinistö, former president of Finland, who was tasked with providing a set with proposals aimed to enhance the resilience of the EU in the face of current threats in the tactical and strategic domains. The final report, available here in PDF, was made publicly available in Brussels on Wednesday.
Among several recommendations, the report proposes the establishment of a “fully fledged intelligence cooperation service at the EU level”, which could serve the EU’s urgent “strategic and operational needs”. Such needs include countering espionage threats within EU institutions, as well as devising Europe-wide networks of defense against sabotage targeting EU critical infrastructure. Part of the new agency’s mission should be to prevent foreign intelligence services from operating “anywhere in the EU”, the report said.
In her public statement upon receiving the report, President von der Leyen stated that the EU should begin to think pre-emptively, rather than reactively, about conventional and unconventional threats to its security. Such a process should begin through “improving the flow of information gathering and intelligence gathering”, initially through existing EU-wide security bodies, such as the European Union Intelligence and Situation Centre (EU-IntCEN) and the European Centre for Information Policy and Security (ECIPS).
Internews org
https://intelnews.org/tag/european-centre-for-information-policy-and-security
