Governing the European Intelligence: Multilateral Intelligence Cooperation in the European Union

Abstract

Since intelligence is an essential part of national security, a high volume of cooperation in this area is not expected. An assessment of the literature shows that there are several obstacles to intelligence cooperation. More precisely, states are reluctant to involve in intelligence cooperation because of trust factors and other factors such as bureaucratic culture and resistance, regime type, lack of normative motivation and shared identities. Even if they are compelled to cooperate, they prefer bilateral intelligence cooperation. However, due to the globalization of national security threats in the last two decades, intelligence organizations are currently obliged to cooperate multilaterally even though they do not prefer to do so. Multilateral intelligence cooperation within the European Union is a unique example of relatively successful multilateral intelligence cooperation. On the one hand, official European intelligence agencies INTCEN and Europol provide the legal framework of intelligence cooperation among the Union. On the other hand, informal channels such as the Club of Berne are also proven useful for the EU’s intelligence cooperation. We argue that the relative success of European intelligence cooperation derives from at least three factors. These are institutionalized demand for intelligence governance, the delegated authority of the members of the EU’s (epistemic) intelligence community, and its ability to set the national security agenda of the EU.