• Home /
• News /
• 2014 /
• January /
• THE EU SECURITY & INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES COOPERATION MECHANISM

THE EU SECURITY & INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES COOPERATION MECHANISM

26 January 2014

Under Article 73 of the Lisbon Treaty (included in the Treaty but not in the proposed Constitution) it states:

"It shall be open to Member States to organise between themselves and under their responsibility such forms of cooperation and coordination as they deem appropriate between the competent departments of their administrations responsible for safeguarding national security "

Are EU security and intelligence agencies using the Treaty cooperation and coordination provision and if so how? Have they jointly discussed the "problems" created by the Snowden revelations?

A rare hint at the linkage between the "gatherers" (NSA, GCHQ etc) and the "users" (the security, intelligence and .law enforcement agencies) was given in a Guardian article: GCHQ and European spy agencies worked together on mass surveillance Edward Snowden papers unmask close technical cooperation and loose alliance between British, German, French, Spanish and Swedish spy agencies: A document cited by the Guardian revealed that the UK's internal security agency MI5 (Security Service) and MI6 (SIS, Secret Intelligence Service) work with GCHQ not only to extend the technical capabilities of other EU state agencies but also to advise them on how to get round their national laws:

"We [GCHQ] have been assisting the BND (along with SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] and Security Service) in making the case for reform or reinterpretation of the very restrictive interception legislation in Germany"