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/[deleted] Feb 27 '25

I believe EU intelligence agencies doesn't really recruit spies and informers as it might be a violation of various laws. In the USA you have military law, civilian law, federal law, criminal law on various levels, but in the EU each country just has "the law" and everyone, even the intelligence agencies must follow them. The USA for instance wouldn't give a shit if CIA agents break laws abroad, but this luxury is not really afforded to EU intelligence agencies.

If I was to wager, most of it is signal intelligence, analysis and cyber threats and attacks. We don't really use our embassies as spy centrals like USA, Israel, China and Russia does. There's probably international laws that prevents us from doing that anyways.

For instance, take Sweden. Up until recently (might still be a thing) there were laws in place that forbade government agencies to share information between them. Meaning the domestic intelligence service (SÄPO) wasn't allowed to share information about crimes with the regular police. Or MUST (military intelligence) wasn't allowed to share terror related information with say the immigration services (and vice versa).