Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, once led a mysterious life. Owing to death threats by the Red Army Faction against her father Ernst Albrecht, a prominent Christian Democrat, and suspicions that she might be kidnapped, she was sent to study in London, under the alias ‘Rose Ladson’. As such, von der Leyen is unfortunately acquainted with the types of security threats that are live across Europe.
In her State of the Union speech last Wednesday, geopolitics and security had top billing. In particular, Russia’s hybrid war in Europe (from sabotage to manipulation of elections, as we highlighted in a recent note, Russia Risks Rising) is enunciated as the main risk, and institutionalized measures are being put in place to counteract this. A full European Security Strategy will be unveiled this autumn, part of which is a NATO style Article 4 measure, where one European nation (likely including Norway, the UK and Canada) can draw upon the support of others. Indeed, the sense is of a Europe broadly preparing to assume the structures and processes of NATO, in the event that the US disengages from it.
It is likely that a component part of the new European Security Strategy will be a European Security Council, whose role may be to run crisis management, cross country procurement and to liaise with close EU partners such as the UK and Canada. In keeping with Jean Monnet’s dictum that Europe only moves forward in a crisis, it has required a war in Ukraine, conflagration across the Middle East, not to mention a very unexpected shift in foreign policy by the White House, to get Europe to this point. Given that its EU level diplomatic service has effectively failed, partly because of national level competences and rivalries, the EC needs to take care that the same does not happen in the realm of security.
One concern, that is so far registering behind the scenes, is a growing rivalry and even antagonism between the French and Germans in the areas of innovation, battle readiness and funding. Another more profound concern is that different EU countries have very disparate levels of competence when it comes to intelligence gathering and operations.
European nation states have been spying professionally for centuries, and Christopher Andrew’s excellent book ‘The Secret World’ makes this very clear. Some have allowed these skills to wither, and others have had to pivot to meet new challenges. Spain’s intelligence effort was almost entirely focused on domestic threats (separatists) up until the lethal Madrid bombings in March 2004, and thereafter it had to quickly build up an external facing capability. Other nations, from Sweden to Japan, are now augmenting their external-facing intelligence services.
In this context, the French magazine L’Express has, based on interviews with sixty former spies (including some agency chiefs), scored and ranked Europe’s intelligence agencies, and there is a very good discussion of the process in the Collimateur podcast. The runaway winner is MI6, on 261 points, followed by France’s DGSE on 169 points (judges apparently gave them high marks for their field operations), followed by the Netherlands on 97 points (renowned for their discretion and cyber capabilities). Then, maybe unsurprisingly in fourth is Ukraine’s secret service, given the extent of the challenges it has faced. Germany comes some way behind in fifth, followed mostly by the Nordic countries, Poland and Estonia.
A number of large countries are well down the list, such as Spain and notably Italy (Estonia gets 27 points as compared to Italy’s 9 points), as are wealthier countries Switzerland and Belgium. Austria and Portugal prop up the end of the list, and the likes of Hungary and Slovakia get zero scores, and according to the authors of the research report, are largely untrusted. Ireland did not feature. There are broadly two axes of strength, London/Paris and Den Haag, and the other to the north (Nordics/Baltics down to Poland). The south of Europe is weak, as are a number of EU members to the east.
Today, the majority of the intelligence agencies in Europe are united by the challenge presented by Russia, not to mention hybrid actors (gangs and cyber-attack groups) as well as some powerful corporate intelligence teams. There remains insufficient trust between many of them, and the opportunity for hostile actors to target weaker states is significant. Lurking behind the ranking is an ongoing reliance on US intelligence.
By that mark, Europe’s spies have a long way to go.
Have a great week ahead, Mike
The Levelling 