The Commission’s 2025 intelligence cell proposal: from intelligence sharing to supranational intelligence?

This article examines what the European Commission’s 2025 proposal for an intelligence cell reveals about the trajectory and limits of EU intelligence cooperation. The proposal is situated within a longer genealogy of recurrent calls for a European FBI/CIA and is assessed through a paradigm shift framework. The findings suggest that the EU is undergoing a significant cognitive shift in how intelligence is framed: away from a narrow adjunct to foreign policy or counterterrorism towards a cross-sectoral instrument of preparedness, resilience, institutional self-protection and strategic autonomy, especially in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine and hybrid threats. This shift, however, has not been matched by positive feedback loops among EU member states and national services that shape actual intelligence cooperation. They still favour national ownership, originator control, bilateral and minilateral networks, and bounded EU-level fusion rather than supranational authority or control. Thus, while substantially increasing salience, the Commission’s policy entrepreneurship in the intelligence field remains contested. The likely trajectory is therefore not a supranational intelligence agency, but stronger SIAC/INTCEN-centred analysis, improved Commission access to threat assessments, and more structured but still sovereignty-sensitive intelligence support.