Get ready for escalated British spying on the European Union and vice versa.
With a new 80-seat parliamentary majority, Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson will likely effect Brexit in early 2020. Then Britain will begin a new round of negotiations with EU leaders to shape its future relationship with the political bloc. Those negotiations carry great consequence for both Britain and the remaining 27 EU member states. Both sides agree that the negotiations should be concluded by the end of 2020, although that timeline can be extended. Let’s take this piece by piece.
First up, the espionage interest. On paper, both Britain and the EU say they want to build a long term relationship built on mutual benefit. In reality, each side is determined that its own economic interests be prioritized. On Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel observed that Johnson’s victory means a “new competitor at our door.” President Emmanuel Macron of France took the next step by pledging that the EU wouldn’t tolerate “an unfair competitor.”
What the EU is concerned about here is a British economy uncoupled from extensive EU regulations. EU leaders rightly fear that, after shedding the EU’s trade barriers against the world, Britain will make its exports cheaper and more attractive than EU exports. In turn, the EU wants to bind Britain to EU regulations in return for the U.K.’s preferred access to EU trading markets. Britain, of course, wants maximum EU trading access without any limits on its ability to form trade deals with non-EU nations.
That’s where the espionage targeting comes in.
With 27 different member states all debating how best the EU should deal with Britain, London has ample opportunity to do some sleuthing. Britain will want to know where EU members agree and where they disagree, and which nations can be persuaded to support Britain’s negotiating interests. Britain will want to know how Macron, Merkel, and chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier are planning to achieve their objectives, what their red lines are, and what issues they might be malleable on. The EU, of course, will want to know exactly the same about the British government.
That’s where the spying tools come in.
Britain’s focus will be on accessing EU-related strategy documents, intercepting EU communications, and identifying which EU officials to focus on influencing and undermining. Keen to avoid the embarrassment of a spy scandal that might unify the EU in opposition to it, Britain is unlikely to attempt to recruit major human sources inside EU headquarters at Brussels (although it must certainly have some sources already — Britain’s MI6 intelligence service might ask the CIA to fill the gap here). Instead, Britain’s signal intelligence agency, GCHQ, will take the lead. The second most capable signal intelligence service after the NSA, GCHQ is also a near-symbiotic partner to the NSA. At least in certain areas, the United States and Britain will work together to accomplish this EU mission.
The EU effort will be led by France’s DGSE intelligence service. Capable and aggressive, DGSE will aim to figure out what British officials are planning. A particular focus will fall on intercepting trade-deal-related communications between London and Washington. DGSE satellites will take the lead here, but if they can, the DGSE will seek to tap transatlantic fiber optic cables (only the U.S. does this well) in that pursuit. But the French are also more flexible-minded in their recruitment of human intelligence sources. So if DGSE can find a British civil servant willing to drop a few documents now and again, they will do so. A special focus will go toward targeting British officials in Brussels.
Ultimately, for reasons of counterterrorism and Russian aggression, in particular, the British-EU intelligence relationship will remain close. But next year’s cross-channel intelligence activity will show that there are few true friends in the intelligence world.
