| For decades Europe has confronted expanding transnational crime in forms of organized crime, the illicit drug trade, terrorism, and other serious cross border crimes. Predicting crime and criminal trends is the role of intelligence; however, the European Union has failed to fully integrate its disparate criminal intelligence efforts. Whereas, European law enforcement agencies long ago formed regimes of cooperation to combat common foes, criminal intelligence agencies have demonstrated significant reluctance to share all but the lowest cost information in generating fusion analysis. For example, the European Union elevated Europol to official status as an intelligence processing agency in 1999; however, results have been disappointing because of member-states' reluctance to share hard intelligence except in bilateral or limited multilateral settings. Research was conducted at six criminal intelligence agencies in the European Union to determine why they do not share information at more elevated levels than is common practice. Reasons are examined why the reluctance to share information prevails in an atmosphere wherein agency cooperation and policy coordination should be found that promotes sharing. Intelligence systems, structures, varieties and models are examined and compared with a new model of intelligence called the Intelligence Business Model, in which a consumer-producer relationship is described between policymakers and intelligence executives. Additionally, information-sharing in the European Union, corruption as a hindrance to cooperation, and information-sharing under federalism and inter-governmentalism are examined. Information-sharing solutions for the European Union are offered in the context of cooperation theory. |
