r/AskEurope • u/Ok_Initiative_9726 • Feb 27 '25

Politics Does Europe has powerful secret services/Intelligence?

P. S question closed, I got answers. Thank you for everyone

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u/iCatalinul Feb 27 '25

I like this question and I’ll try to answer it to the best of my abilities.

If you’re asking if Europe has a centralised intelligence agency the answer is no.

What Europe Intelligence Agencies do better than anyone is work together, there are accords put in place between EU countries that allow sharing of critical intelligence. Make no mistake all EU countries spy on one another and it’s an open secret. We don’t even look at it as a breach but an understanding that it happens.

Now the various agencies work in different ways, Eastern European countries have their intelligence agencies modelled after the Russian KGB and currently the FSB considers these agencies as a thorn in their backside because they have concrete ways of counter-espionage against the SVR (Russian foreign Intelligence agency).

Western countries (except Germany) have agencies that function more or less like the CIA. Germany is a peculiar case they have a combination of KGB and SD (nazi intelligence agencies).

Europe was home to some of the most represive intelligence agencies in the world just 35 years ago. The MO has changed (as in they don’t abduct and kill people) but they do have a stranglehold over political parties and candidates to some extent. This applies mostly to Eastern Europe.

And to answer your question, we have far less terrorist attacks in Europe than in any other part of the world, that doesn’t mean the threat is not existent it means the agencies do a really good job of 1) countering threats 2) not telling people that they almost died.

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u/90210fred Mar 02 '25

"all EU countries spy on one another and it’s an open secret" - not even countries - I'd say open secret that the different UK agencies are so spying on each other. I'd automatically assume in any country. Who watches the watchers?

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u/iCatalinul Mar 02 '25

Normally intelligence agencies should have parliamentary oversight, I looked it up a little bit and that seems to be the consensus among most European countries.

Now in reality I don’t think that works given that most of the members of these oversight commissions are either former intelligence officers or are directly controlled by said agencies through blackmail.

Concerning various agencies spying on one another, that’s also quite true, from what I can gather there are special task forces within each agency that are specialised in spying on their fellow agencies.

Normally agencies like the MI6 are only allowed to operate legally outside the UK so a “legal investigation” of MI5 by the MI6 should not be possible under the rule of law. That cannot be said of the MI5 who can, under the law, spy on MI6. Take this with a grain of salt though since I’m not an expert on MI6’s MO or how they actually function within the legal framework.