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The EU’s Out-Of-Control Intelligence Services (That Don’t Exist, Officially)
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Brussels, the center of gravity of the European Union and seat of NATO Headquarters, not only teems with lobbyists, diplomats, military personnel, bureaucrats, politicians, Americans, and other weird characters from around the world, but also with spies.
“Brussels is one of the largest spy capitals in the world,” said Alain Winants, head of the Belgian State Security Service VSSE. He guesstimated that there’d be “several hundred” plying their trade at any one time, chasing after a broad array of topics, from trade issues to security policies.
Yet officially, the EU itself doesn’t have an intelligence service of its own. It’s dependent on the national intelligence services of the member states that supply it with “finished intelligence.” Officially. In reality, it has been building an intelligence apparatus of six services so far, some of them brand new, populated already by 1,300 specialists. But because they’re officially not conducting direct covert operations – though they do go overseas, including to Libya during the Arab Spring! – they simply deny being intelligence services.
Thus, four of them have finagled to escape democratic oversight and control by the European Parliament. Even in the US, the Intelligence Community is accountable to the Congress. Not so in the EU. As everything else in the EU bureaucracy, these services – the newest dating back to 2011 – are constantly growing, assuming more functions, responsibilities, and power, with vast and ever expanding databases at their fingertips, tied into a dense network of other intelligence services. And it’s just the beginning.
Some Members of Parliament are getting antsy and want to rein them in. Martin Ehrenhauser, independent MP from Austria, and member of the Subcommittee on Security and Defense Policy, is one of the ringleaders; and in his blog post, he details some of the issues.
Since its founding, the EU has been building its own spy programs, often triggered by specific needs, in an “ad-hoc” manner “without strategy” and without a “coherent concept” about its structure, methods, and people, he writes. This “EU intelligence community” saw its first steps in 1993 with the founding of Europol, the only intelligence service established by treaty, and thus the only one with a legitimate basis. Between the prolific years of 2000 and 2004, four additional intelligence units were cobbled together by the unelected European Council. And another one in 2011.
Parliament, emasculated by design in the hyper-democratic manner of the EU, was never given an opportunity to be involved. The logic? Since these entities receive only “finished intelligence” from national services, democratic oversight would rest with national parliaments, not with the European Parliament. Alas, these EU intelligence services are gathering their own intelligence to an ever greater degree. Hence, Ehrenhauser writes, the idea that the EU receives 100% of its information from national intelligence services is a “fallacy.”
The EU intelligence services function similarly to their national counterparts: they collect information, often overseas, analyze it, and transmit it to policy makers. These products can be classified EU TOP SECRET. The mere fact that they might not use covert operations directly to obtain the information, Ehrenhauser writes, is “not sufficient to deny the very existence of the intelligence services and therefore the necessity of democratic controls by the European Parliament.”
Of the six services, only Europol (intelligence and law enforcement) and Frontex (external borders) are subject to some parliamentary oversight. The remaining four – the Intelligence Analysis Center (IntCen), the Satellite Center (SatCen), the Intelligence Directorate (IntDir), and the Situation Room (crisis monitoring) – are beyond democratic controls.
All four have been rolled into the European External Action Service (EEAS), which itself was founded in 2011. Some of them don’t even publish their budgets. Though they’re still small, given their youth, they’re destined to grow just like Europol has been growing over its 20 years of existence. They’re already getting tangled up in “ever more complex decision-making structures with diffuse responsibilities,” Ehrenhauser writes, and they’re making “sweeping decisions far away from the voter.”
So he demands oversight by the European Parliament “at all levels.” It’s not like they haven’t tried. Well, one tiny bit. While Parliament – unique among democracies – can’t initiate legislation, it does have some control over the purse strings. So there was an initiative in the budget committee to force EEAS to disclose the budgets of these four entities. It would have provided a modicum of say and transparency. But it was voted down in the committee.
What kind of Parliament decides to abrogate its responsibilities? What kind of lawmaker votes for continued ignorance and powerlessness in face of what someday will be a massive intelligence apparatus with unknown budgets, ill-defined limits, and the mission to serve its master, the European Council? Monsters have been created on this basis. Another victory for unelected Eurocrats and their armies of functionaries that plod forward in their unsteady manner, hell-bent on implementing their vision of a mega-state encumbered only slightly by the somewhat inconvenient veneer of democracy.
Meanwhile, hunger is spreading from its traditional strongholds in the global south to depression-hit Southern Europe. In Greece, reports are growing of children having to scrounge for food from classmates, while in Spain city dwellers have become inured to the spectacle of people rummaging in trash cans for a bite to eat. But there’s a reason. Read.... Starving the World for Power and Profit: The Global Agribusiness Model
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Playing again games with the fact that the AngloAmerican audience does not understand the confederate model? They answer to the Council, which means that the ultimate authority rests on the national parliaments
and yes, the EU parliament is defanged - by treaty - otherwise we slip into a federative model - the very road to superstate that nobody but financials want
Look more closely, you'll see that those services are supervised - by statute - by the national services. ding, ding! they are something like the janitor at school posing as the referee at a game or, better, as the coach instead of admitting being the waterboy. They are useful self-glorifying service centers for the NATIONAL secret services and police forces
Take EuroPol. They can't even arrest anybody - all 400 of them. But boy, they pose like the FBI on CNN. Far, far away from that, and no treaty in sight to change that
and no, EU parliament, you won't get more of that stuff, otherwise you legitimize it and yourself with it
just do your fucking job, will ya? a central and subordinate role - like the executive secretary to the owners of a biz and don't play the sovereign, you aren't and you shouldn't
the Swiss btw also have a similar model regarding police forces. They belong to the cantons, so that Bern's central government has no own civilian enforcement...at all. Which keeps it a confederacy, too
Reality check:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10041817/Federal-Eur...
and this is supposed to be a reality check? I'm talking about what is now, the Telegraph talks about what might be in future
Let me put it this way: what is wrong about Barroso and the european federalists in making their proposals? the question is: do they have majorities? I sincerely doubt it. what do you want, a law forbidding them to propose political deals?
fact is: the financials are lobbying for EuroBonds, EuroTaxes and Fiscal Union - and of course a EU Parliament on top of all of it - i.e. federation
note how this article asks for more power of oversight for the EU parliament in services that have national oversight - again, those agencies are not hierarchically on top of the national ones, they are "daughters" of them instead of "mothers"
note how this article attacks the Council as "undemocratic" - meanwhile it's (mostly) the expression of national parliaments - see parliamentarism
meanwhile the EU is - at the moment - on a confederative model thanks to treaties that barely passed through - and little appetite for more
Yeah dumb-ass it is a reality-check to your endless bullshit, the link IS talking about the FUTURE, and who WANTS a FEDERAL system. EVERYTHING about the future is a "MIGHT BE"! Are your trying to say you're a Roma and have a honest-to-gawd 20-20-future crystall ball, or are really a closet-pope and thus infallible???
Open your fucking eyes fool, you're in complete denial (maybe you're really Barosso moonlighting?!).
and the article at the top is busy trying to demolish the current confederative model by attacking the "undemocratic" setup which requires the council to co-decide on anything the EU-parliament might vote on, asks for EU parliamentary oversight on what is done nationally and so on, including on a EU-parliament "freedom" to initiate action etc. etc.
meanwhile the whole thing is built up on treaties and the referendums on a european constitution have been rejected
again: the article is on one side made to scare about an encroaching federalism while actually asking for more of it
again: it's not this way, currently, and since you revert to ad-homs please explain to me how you think the federalists are going to get what they want
and what is this idiocy about "maybe you're really Barosso moonlighting"? do you understand at all what I'm talking about? I'm saying that Barroso has a right to propose a federal model, and that the benighted Anglo-American financial press is busy attacking the EU as-it-is while actually asking for a federal model, EuroBonds, EuroTaxes and so on...
...something that I regularly expose because I defend the current setup - I defend the sovereignty of the european nation-states in a confederational model where the members decide what the "center" does and not the other way round
it's you talking about the future, not me looking into a Roma cristal ball - reality is the present, not the rants of a Telegraph which famously presents the future as already here
JFC! I'll try again, you said:
So I posted a link, as a valid reality check, that shows that it is not just financials that want this, its actually a major ideological theme of the centralization agenda, and has been for a long time.
You then went off on some tangent, talking about the "future", to deny/downplay the reality of the situation demonstrated by the link given. And since when has that centralization agenda given a damn what was popular, or about electoral mandates? They do everything they can to avoid popular appraisal and asking for a mandate to implement their agenda.
So;
Are you sure that YOU know what you're talking about? Because your responses look a lot like a case of very selective 'comprehension', to put it more gently.
Element, you wrote "So I posted a link, as a valid reality check, that shows that it is not just financials that want this, its actually a major ideological theme of the centralization agenda, and has been for a long time"
You posted a link from the Telegraph. You know that it belongs to the Barcley's brothers, don't you? It is "financials", in my book. Just have a look how the brothers tried several times to set up the EU and the UK at each other's throaths for their own special tax situation
Their trick is to moan against the "undemocratic, arrogant" EU (without mentioning the role of the British government), the "all-powerful, unelected" Council (again, without mentioning that PM Cameron has a seat there and is answerable to the British parliament) and the "defanged EU Parliament" (without mentioning that this is part and parcel of a confederative model where authority/legitimacy flows from the national parliaments)
Sorry, you seem to be a very bright, knowlegble fellow, particularly when it comes to technical things. But did you ever hear about "politics makes strange bedfellows?".
The "let's give the EU parliament more power" theme is part and parcel of the "centralization agenda" - the EU "federalists"
the Telegraph adores this theme, in the same way as it hates the european "balanced budgets" theme (except for domestic UK purposes) and adores the thought of more money printing, more protection for the quintessential British banking industry's interests in the eurozone, and whatever keeps the eurozone disunited in purpose
it's the old trick of pushing your opponents into unsustainable political territory with simplified themes
Look at yourself: on one side I have the impression you'd be in theory a natural ally of the view of "keeping the EU small and specific", on the other side you fall for their "more democracy, empower the EU parliament" theme because imho you have not understood or dislike the confederate approach
meanwhile the Telegraph loves to make articles where the reader gets no clue if they are talking about something that is already "the law of the land" or it's just a scare they want to build up
of course there are "federalists" in the EU, and yes, by expecting the Commission to "be european" they are kind of "the guys paid to strive for federalism". The question is more: are you an european federalist?
If you have seen the Pink Panther movies with Inspector Clouseau ...
You understand the operations of 'European Intelligence Services'
"Monsters have been created on this basis."
The superficial appearance of incompetence may be correct, except that those apparently incompetent political spies act like PUPPETS. The general rule is that police serve private property, while the secret police serve the secrets of private property. That general rule is relatively benign as long as the ownership of private property is widely distributed. However, as the ownership of the property becomes more and more concentrated, both the police, as well as the secret police, work for the rulers, against the vast majority of those being ruled. As things get worse, there is no doubt that these secret police organizations will become Monsters!
Better still, hang a portrait of Cathartine Slashton over your desk
http://www.google.com/search?q=catherine+ashton&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=un...
First time I heard the words "EU Commission's European External Action Service", uttered from the mouth of an unimpressive, awkward drop-kick EU ambassador, David Daily in 2010, I though it sounded like it was lifted from a 1950s Thunderbird's are GO! action-movie for kiddies. Just sounded weird and gratuitous.
"Yes Laydy Penelope"
Hillary's EU doppleganger.
Compared to Slashton, Hitlary makes out like Bar Rafaeli
http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/22/maxims-top-10-hottest-women-of-2012-ph...