This article examines what the European Commission's 2025 proposal for an intelligence cell reveals about the trajectory and limits of EU intelligence cooperation. The proposal is situated within a longer genealogy of recurrent calls for a European FBI/CIA and is assessed through a paradigm shift framework. The findings suggest that the EU is undergoing a significant cognitive shift in how intelligence is framed: away from a narrow adjunct to foreign policy or counterterrorism towards a cross-sectoral instrument of preparedness, resilience, institutional self-protection and strategic autonomy, especially in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine and hybrid threats. This shift, however, has not been matched by positive feedback loops among EU member states and national services that shape actual intelligence cooperation. They still favour national ownership, originator control, bilateral and minilateral networks, and bounded EU-level fusion rather than supranational authority or control. Thus, while substantially increasing salience, the Commission's policy entrepreneurship in the intelligence field remains contested. The likely trajectory is therefore not a supranational intelligence agency, but stronger SIAC/INTCEN-centred analysis, improved Commission access to threat assessments, and more structured but still sovereignty-sensitive intelligence support.
Against the backdrop of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has exposed shortages in ammunition and capabilities and brought defence back to the heart of the European agenda, this article has examined how two leading EU military powers, France and Germany, have redefined rearmament since February 2022, and whether this process has become politicised. It has assessed whether the European rearmament process has altered the way in which the French and German governments conceptualise rearmament, and whether this reconceptualisation has generated political contestation within each polity. Using discursive institutionalism, the article has analysed governmental discourses on rearmament and their reception within the French and German polities, relying on a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative and qualitative data analysis. By focusing the analysis on two key aspects of rearmament (defence spending and the military-industrial dimension), the article demonstrates that both states primarily reconceptualise Europe’s rearmament at the state level, leading to a quiet reconceptualisation in the French case, whereas Germany seems to undergo a louder reconceptualisation of rearmament.
