Twenty-five members of the European Union have agreed to establish an academy for joint intelligence training. An initiative seen as a concrete effort to deepen cooperation in European security following Brexit.
The announcement came just hours after the main EU heads of state spoke in favor of the creation of a joint EU defense force.
The decision to set up a common intelligence training school was approved on Monday by 25 defense and foreign ministers of the EU. It was part of a broader agreement involving 16 other common defense and security projects under the Permanent Structured Cooperation Pact (PESCO). The pact was agreed for the first time in September 2017 and has since run under the supervision of the European Defense Agency and the external security service, the EU's diplomatic service.
Since then almost 20 projects of a military or security nature have been signed under PESCO. Monday's agreement virtually doubled existing PESCO projects. The new EU intelligence academy initiative will be led by Greece - an EU member of the 1981 - and will be based in Cyprus, which joined the EU in the 2004. When operational, the academy will provide "education and training in intelligence disciplines and other specific fields for EU secret service staff," according to a joint PESCO release released Monday.
The new intelligence school will work in cooperation with the individual intelligence agencies of the 25 co-signatory states, along with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other regional security bodies, PESCO said. However, three EU states, in particular Denmark, Malta and the United Kingdom, refused to support the project. Denmark and Malta do not participate in PESCO, while the UK should leave the EU in March next year. However, even before Brexit, London had vetoed the idea of closer EU intelligence cooperation, which saw itself as a potential competitor to the so-called Five Eyes Alliance, a post-war intelligence pact between the United States, the United Kingdom , Australia, New Zealand and Canada.