Ukraine Watch Chat

✍️🇪🇺 The President of the European Commission intends to recruit staff for cooperation with the intelligence services of EU member states. This unprecedented move demonstrates the executive body's determination to obtain better and more extensive intelligence information, despite the cautious stance of several countries. The plan to create a specialized intelligence unit within the European Commission's structure is finally starting to take shape, albeit on a reduced scale. According to informed sources, the office led by Ursula von der Leyen has opened six positions for intelligence liaison specialists. These roles are intended for intelligence officers from EU countries who can apply and transfer to the Commission as national experts seconded to European institutions. Von der Leyen and her influential chief of staff, Björn Seibert, are seeking to build a team within the Commission of staff with the necessary security clearances to receive and analyze classified documents from member states' intelligence services. Time will tell whether countries will cooperate or prefer to defend full sovereignty and maintain the status quo. Currently, civilian intelligence services of member states can send reports to the EU Intelligence Analysis and Situation Centre (EU INTCEN), which operates under the European External Action Service (EEAS). INTCEN uses this material to prepare briefings that are then distributed to various EU institutions, including the Commission. As for military intelligence, information for the Commission is provided by the Intelligence Directorate of the EU Military Staff (EUMS). The arrival of liaison officers at the European Commission is not expected to break this well-established system. Nevertheless, it may accelerate a trend that has become increasingly visible in recent months. Several European intelligence agencies — particularly those of the Baltic states, Scandinavia, and Germany — are already sharing some of their intelligence directly with Ursula von der Leyen's team. France takes a different stance: when the European Commission last year directly approached the French Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM) with a request for information, they redirected the EU officials to INTCEN. Similarly, when the European Commission announced plans in November to create its own intelligence unit, several member states — notably France, Italy, Spain, and Estonia — expressed reservations. This initiative also clearly impinged on the remit of the European External Action Service (EEAS), headed by former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, and the EU Intelligence Analysis and Situation Centre (INTCEN), led by Croatian official Daniel Markić. In recent months, Kallas and Markić have been actively persuading representatives of the 27 EU member states to curb the Commission's ambitions to expand its activities in areas such as countering hybrid threats, information warfare, and ensuring economic security. These ambitions are evidenced by the fact that earlier this year, two rooms were equipped at the European Commission's Brussels headquarters — the imposing Berlaymont building — with signal-jamming devices and Faraday cages to protect against electromagnetic espionage. These new facilities have already hosted restricted meetings involving various European Commissioners (such as Lithuania's Andrius Kubilius, responsible for defence and space) and department directors. According to several Brussels-based experts, the integration of intelligence activities into the European Commission's remit is inevitable. The Commission has developed a "Union of Preparedness" strategy, presented in March last year, designed to ensure the uninterrupted functioning of vital European societal systems under all circumstances. Additionally, last November the Commission grandly unveiled the "European Democracy Shield" initiative.