It’s now over nine years since a decision was made by the European Parliament, on the 5 July 2000, to establish a temporary committee to investigate what was known in the public realm as the Echelon intelligence gathering system.
This committee was charged with investigating whether a system called ‘Echelon’ existed, run and operated by the Anglo-sphere countries, and what its capabilities were. They sought to understand whether the system was working within Community law, whether citizens were safe, whether encoding of information in normal electronic communications would be necessary, whether the EU institutions themselves were safe, and whether EU industries were suffering a detrimental effect because of this system.
From the outset, the temporary committee was compromised in its work, as temporary committees lacked the legal authority to conduct inquiries and demand witnesses to appear. No doubt this was in part due to pressure from the UK, a signatory to the UK-USA intelligence sharing agreement, whereby the UK, US,Australia, Canada and New Zealand work together in the sharing of information.
However, any UK pressure did nothing to stop the production of a document that was typically anti-American. Author Gerhard Schmid viewed the UK as nothing more than a platform on which the US carried out its operations to undermine European industry. Recognising the EU’s dependence and inferiority to US power in section 12.3, the report then went on to urge the EU to recognise itself as an equal partner, finishing with the ‘motion for a resolution’, under point Z, of “the EU as a partner on an equal footing with the United States…”, noting that “a common security policy which did not involve the secret services would not make sense…”
The investigation reported that the focus of Echelon was mainly the acquisition of private and commercial data, though the volume of data collected made practical analysis almost impossible, vastly limiting the systems usefulness. Along with the Anglo-sphere states, France and Russia were identified as also having the capabilities to operate a similar system.
The continued existence and operation of a deep level of cooperation and coordination between the UK-USA agreement signatories can still be found in evidence such as the documents lost by an incompetent Cabinet Office official on a train in June 2008. The documents recovered had, according to the BBC, “for UK/US/Canadian and Australian eyes only” emblazoned across them, showing that there is at least still some information Europe does not have access to.
The Echelon report reminded everyone that even in 2000, under Articles 11 and 12 of The Treaty on European Union, member states had a “binding requirement to enhance and develop their mutual political solidarity”. Indeed, it noted on page 130 that future integration within the EU would require and demand intelligence to be available at the European level, and in point 12.2.3 fired this federalist broadside: “In the past nation states sued to guarantee their own external security, internal order, national prosperity and cultural identity. Today, the European Union is in many fields in the process of taking up a role at least complementary to that of the nation state. It is inconceivable that the intelligence services will be the last and only are not affected by the process of European integration.” To put it bluntly, this is not what the Europhiles want you to read.
The fact that the European Parliament found it necessary to investigate whether a member state was spying on the other member states shows precisely how utopian the dream of Europe really is. Yet the elites, particularly the left-wing Labour elites, seem as blind to this as they are to the everincreasing current account deficits.
Yet just as the UK may appear to have been involved with operations to further the Anglo-sphere, so our ‘European partners’ have been involved in operations against us. Telegraph journalist Sean Rayment recorded on the 8th of February 2009 that an Army intelligence document dated January 19th mentioned that spies from 20 foreign intelligence agencies including France and Germany were actively targeting the UK.
So in spite of all the idealism of European unity, the reality of being ever vigilant is as necessary as ever. Which makes the ramming through Parliament without proper debate of the Treaty of Lisbon even more concerning. Whilst it does in Article 4 TEU respect that national security should remain a state function, it also:
• Commits signatories to implementing common defence to reinforce the European identity and its independence in the world; • Aims for ever-increasing convergence of Member States actions (Article 24.2);
• Requires Member States “before undertaking any action on the international scene or entering into any commitment which could affect the Union’s interests…” to consult each other and ensure through concerted coordinated action that the EU can assert its interests internationally (Article 32);
• Demands Member States to make available to the EU “civilian and military capabilities” for implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (Article 42.3);
• Gives the European Defence Agency power to enquire into identifying Member States military capabilities, to promote harmonization and promote multilateralism and thus urge integration between security services (Article 45).
The Europhile might indeed ask ‘what is the problem with sharing information?’ This would miss the whole point: we cannot trust our supposed allies in Europe. Whether it is secret protectionism of the French car industry, German reductions of non wage-labour costs, or covert spying on British interests, trusting Europe with British interests is inherently suicidal.
Already we have seen consequences of Britain’s wayward drift towards Europe. The US has become increasingly reluctant to share information with the UK, even on such projects where the UK is a level-One partner, such as the F35 Joint Strike Fighter project. In American eyes, the Europeans cannot be trusted, and as seen above, we already know that to be true. One only has to look back at the case of French Major Pierre-Henri Bunel who leaked NATO plans to the Serbians to understand why those not in the Anglo-sphere have such a bad press.
Given this situation, one can only hope that Echelon is indeed operating and obtaining information from our neighbours in Europe, as they most certainly are working to obtain information from us. The European Parliament’s Echelon report acknowledged that the UK would never admit to spying on our neighbours, as we could keep an official policy of EU loyalty without ever admitting what happens behind closed doors. But the longer our political class play with the fire of handing Brussels ever more power, the closer we move to the day when the US no longer trusts us and our security services report to Brussels, the impossibility of which was considered “inconceivable” to Mr. Schmid.
