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Following the Paris attacks, leading EU politicians are calling for greater exchange of information between national secret services. But such calls have been made before and experts say it may be difficult.
Sharing information between member states’ police and intelligence services is seen as crucial in tracking down terrorists.
Last Friday (November 20), the EU interior ministers met in an extraordinary meeting called for by France one week after the attacks that killed 130 people in the French capital. The ministers decided to step up law enforcement cooperation and to a greater extent share information on suspected terrorists and foreign fighters using various instruments such as the Passenger Name Records, the Schengen Information System (SIS) and through the European law enforcement agency, Europol.
‘EU intelligence service needed’
On Wednesday (November 25), cooperation between the secret services was raised in the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
The leaders of several political groups called for more collaboration and Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal ALDE group, even asked for a proper EU intelligence agency. (audio in French)
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“The terrorists, my dear colleagues, don’t know borders. We need to have security and intelligence capacities that cross borders,” said Verhofstadt, who pointed at the fact that the suspected terrorist, Salah Abdelslam, was stopped at the border between France and Belgium just after the attacks, but was let through since French authorities didn’t have the same information as the Belgian.
There are several examples where suspected extremists have been on the radar of different secret services and where questions have been raised whether more cooperation could have prevented the killings.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, described as the brain behind the Paris attack, was controlled by the police in an airport in Germany early 2014, but was also let go. And when the French police found him after the attacks in the suburb of Saint-Denis in the North of Paris, it was reportedly with help from Moroccan intelligence services providing information, not European.
Nothing was done despite previous calls
The European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also wants more cooperation. During the debate in the European Parliament he concluded disappointingly that such intelligence collaboration was discussed already in 2001. (audio in French)
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“Just one week after the attacks in New York, we promised, the heads of state in the EU, to work in a concerted fashion and to make secret services function better. Nothing was done,” said Juncker, arguing that this time real effective cooperation must start.
Clear limitations to cooperation
Secret services in different EU countries already work together and exchange information on a country-by-country basis. But there seems to be a reluctance to share information on an EU-wide level.
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“Most of the information that they are dealing with is considered secret and sharing it requires a high level of trust which may often be missing,” said Thomas Renard, counter terrorism expert at the Egmont institute, in an interview with Euranet Plus.
Renard said cooperation is easier when it’s done reactively and argued that after the Paris attacks there has been a lot of cooperation.
However, when it comes to preventive work, making sure that attacks don’t happen, that is much more difficult.
He described intelligence work as a puzzle where the investigators often just have a few pieces and then it may not make sense to share them.
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“They gather so much information, that’s the nature of their business, that they simply cannot, and they do not have an incentive, to share that information preventively,” Renard explained.
He argued that if all 28 EU member states were to share all their secret information on suspects, important details might be hidden in an overflow of information which would be counterproductive. That, in combination with a lack of trust between national authorities, makes secret service cooperation complicated.
- Author: Andreas Liljeheden, Euranet Plus News Agency
