Intelligence Education and the European Union’s External Action

Abstract

The European Union (EU), as an international actor, has developed an anticipatory system encompassing different structures and intelligence capabilities that inform its decisionmaking process on foreign and security policy and external action through transnational European intelligence. This European intelligence system constitutes an important part of European integration, specialized and complex enough for requiring the provision of knowledge and competencies for prospective European leaders and officers through higher education courses. This article discusses the course introduction, syllabus design, teaching approach, and implementation of a first course on European intelligence analysis at the College of Europe in 2014, an institution founded in 1949 and “the world’s first institute of postgraduate studies and training in European affairs.” It capitalizes on the experience of the authors/instructors of the course framed within the Master of Arts in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies at the Bruges campus of the College of Europe.