A European spy school… Really?
(B2) The info does the buzz among a few colleagues: the European Union is going to open an intelligence school to train European spies. Really ? The American CIA or the Russian SVR would soon have a European equivalent?...
Several media took two words from the list of PESCO projects. And inflated the info. Each adding a little more, so as to make it a little + sensational. This gives at Politico. " The establishment of a joint EU spy school would be a big step forward for the bloc's intelligence community ". Ooh there guys! Maybe we should stop smoking and come back down to earth... 🙂
What is the nature of this project ?
The project for a joint European intelligence school (Joint EU Intelligence School) * is among the 17 different projects adopted on Monday (November 19), at the end of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs / Defense in the framework of permanent structured cooperation (PESCO). It is therefore a real project approved by the 25 (members of PESCO), that does not mean that they will all participate in it.
Who participates?
Very little. This project is led by Greece with the participation of a single country: Cyprus. This means that none of the major countries with a structured intelligence service (France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc.) is taking part in the project. The same is true for medium-sized countries with a service, more circumscribed, but whose "eye" is recognized as an expert on certain subjects or certain areas (Belgians, Dutch, Czechs, Finns, Austrians, for example) . Moreover, everything remains based on voluntary participation: the countries that want to participate will then participate, and according to the limits that they have set between themselves. We are therefore not in a large-scale project.
An anti-Turkish school?
It is hard to see agents from the DGSE or the DGSI going to train in Greece or Cyprus. This school therefore has a vocation essentially oriented towards the exchange between two countries which have a common adversary: Turkey. The interest of Greece and Cyprus is, on the other hand, interesting by its location, near the Middle East (Syria, Turkey in particular) or if it is a question of benefiting from a rather exceptional natural environment (sea, heat, mountain...) allowing various training conditions (diving...) for 'action' services. Like what constitutes the center labeled NATO on the base of La Souda where the anti-piracy maritime groups came to train.
Is there a need?
It cannot be said that intelligence training is today one of the major shortcomings in Europe. Most countries have serious internal selection and training systems. And sharing it isn't automatically their top priority. Sharing and exchanging information works under the radar screen. The same applies to certain exchanges of 'good practices'.
(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)
* Note that it is the word 'intelligence' that is used and not that of espionage, which immediately makes you salivate. Intelligence proceeds perhaps from unmentionable methods, but also very classic ones, in particular internet monitoring and intelligence analysis. We are far from 'James Bond' espionage... We are more into 'intelligence' in the French-speaking sense of the term than into 'muscle'.
