The External Dimension of EU Intelligence Cooperation: in Search of Euro-Atlantic Synergies

The article deals with the issue of the European Union’s external cooperation as regards information and intelligence exchange. The specific emphasis is placed on the possibility to emerge hypothetic “Euro-Atlantic” synergies in this area. The paper is based strongly on the consequences of the global war on terror, although it is not limited to this aspect only. In the Article the authors with the great degree explain and analyse such issues like chosen legal and procedural aspects of Euro-Atlantic cooperation in relation to information exchange, from the perspective of its legal basis (both EU treaties and implementing laws) and the political one. It is of a particular importance, because currently the difficulties in describing the scope of the cooperation still exist. The cooperation between the EU and the US is also influenced by the historical developments, especially due to the fact that the anti-terrorism cooperation is still relatively new aspect of European integration processes as a whole. Therefore, the Authors describe also main instances of cooperation which were undertaken by the US and Member States authorities outside the scope of European integration. In particular, such initiatives as Alliance Base and G-6 cooperation were discussed. The paper also presents so-called EU perspective which embraces the most important and newest laws and instruments regulating the information and intelligence exchange, and which are either adopted already or still being discussed within EU decision-making processes. In this respect, such topics as cooperation to exchange data covered by the Passenger Name Records (PNR) and preventing the financing of terrorism activities (like TFTP/Swift model) were presented. In the conclusion, the Authors state that the EU and the US are mutually and indispensably connected, and the “exchange of cooperation instruments” – disregard sometimes serious formal and procedural differences – is the stable, permanent and usually not disrupted process.