EU intelligence services opening up to collaboration

ANDREW RETTMAN

EU member states‘ intelligence services are among the most jealously-guarded national assets despite five decades of integration. But two European Commission-sponsored projects on open source intelligence (Osint) are beginning to change the culture of mistrust.

Launched quietly in the Hungarian capital by the commission and the Hungarian foreign ministry in 2007, the Budapest Club has in the past three and a half years held eight meetings of EU countries‘ intelligence officers and private sector experts in Budapest, Bucharest, Rome and Brussels.

The first event had just 50-or-so delegates. But the last meeting, in Brussels in mid-2010, attracted over 150 specialists from 14 EU countries from both the ‚old‘ and ’new‘ halves of the Union. (more on euobserver.com)