Von der Leyen plans new EU intelligence agency, sparking internal power struggle

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is planning to establish a new intelligence service that would openly compete with the EU’s existing intelligence agency.

According to German Foreign Policy, the new intelligence unit will be directly subordinate to the Secretariat-General of the European Commission, placing it under von der Leyen’s direct command.

The long-standing intelligence unit, IntCen (Intelligence Analysis Centre), is under the authority of EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas. Observers believe that von der Leyen aims to further consolidate her power at Kallas’s expense with this new service.

However, it is uncertain whether the larger EU member states are prepared to accept a powerful EU intelligence service. These countries have historically relied on their own strong national services and are reluctant to create competition for them.

The establishment of the EU’s own intelligence service has been a demand since the 1990s. One of the reasons for this was the feeling among various EU countries that they were deprived of information from US intelligence services during the Yugoslav Wars.

There are widespread concerns that this situation could worsen under a potential presidency of Donald Trump in the US.

An article published in the journal Internationale Politik in 1996 stated that this led to a “rethinking of the current dependency” on the US.

If the EU genuinely wanted to develop its own security and defense policy, it was necessary to provide reliable, comprehensive analyses to Europe’s political and military leaders. Accordingly, the EU needed a “common intelligence service.”

Brussels took the first steps in 1999, immediately after NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia. Javier Solana, then the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, initiated the creation of an intelligence unit called the Joint Situation Centre (SitCen), which was initially linked to the EU military staff.

In 2002, this unit became an independent body within the office of the EU’s foreign affairs representative.

In early 2003, as the EU was preparing to take over the “Allied Harmony” military operation in North Macedonia, which had been conducted by NATO until then, SitCen’s activities were deemed highly successful.

Solana claimed at the time that Brussels had made significant progress and that the EU could “carry out the first intervention without NATO.” He also noted that SitCen had a “network of over a hundred observers” in Southeast Europe who were “trained in intelligence,” gathered information from “open or covert local informants,” and “reported their findings to Brussels daily in encrypted form.”

An employee of Solana’s stated at the time, “The information from there is often better and more detailed than that provided by national services. We have our own eyes and ears around the world.”

Indeed, SitCen was able to rely on “confidential and top-secret information from EU external delegations operating in 130 countries.”

In 2011, SitCen was integrated into the newly established European External Action Service and was renamed the Intelligence Analysis Centre (IntCen) in March 2012, a name it retains to this day.

Since IntCen is officially not allowed to conduct its own operational activities and can only process publicly available information and data collected by national intelligence services, there have been frequent calls for it to either be transformed into a full-fledged intelligence service modeled on the CIA or for such a service to be established elsewhere in the EU.

Most recently, former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö recommended this on October 30, 2017, when presenting a report commissioned by the European Commission on strengthening Europe’s civil and military preparedness.

In the report, Niinistö not only advised that every household in the EU should be prepared to be self-sufficient for at least three days but also stated that Brussels urgently needed a “full-fledged intelligence service at the EU level” that could meet both strategic and operational requirements.

The tasks to be fulfilled include not only preventing sabotage of critical infrastructure but also countering espionage, including within EU institutions.

Currently, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is attempting to establish such an intelligence service. According to reports, a new intelligence unit will be created within the Secretariat-General of the European Commission, directly subordinate to the Commission President.

Citing some employees involved in this matter at the Commission, it is stated that a concept is currently being developed and the necessary discussions are in full swing.

In any case, the plan is to recruit intelligence personnel from EU member states and to gather intelligence for joint projects, but the deployment of operational agents is not planned.

In addition to general assessments, the fact that dependency on the US could be used for blackmail by US President Donald Trump is cited as a triggering factor.

It is believed that the EU must “absolutely be prevented” from being subjected to the whims of a future Trump administration.

Initial reactions are clearly against von der Leyen’s initiative. Observers believe that von der Leyen wants to further expand her own power at the expense of the European External Action Service and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, whose purview currently includes IntCen.

On the other hand, it is noted that national security and the associated intelligence capabilities are the responsibility of the member states. Indeed, in the past, particularly powerful member states with large intelligence services—especially Germany and France—have shown little inclination to offer their capabilities on a large scale to weaker member states through an EU intelligence service.

Finally, it is pointed out that IntCen is currently being restructured and that there is also a high-level center for intelligence gathering, the Single Intelligence Analysis Capacity (SIAC). Furthermore, IntCen has long been in close cooperation with the military intelligence structure, EUMS Int (EU Military Staff Intelligence).