When the leaders of Europe's intelligence services meet at an undisclosed location in Belgium tomorrow, they will discuss sharing information in a way they never have before. In the wake of last month's attacks on New York and Washington, EU leaders have identified intelligence sharing as a key weapon in the fight against terrorism.
The intelligence services will discuss ways of giving more information to Europol, Europe's embryonic police agency. But it would be surprising if last month's events, dramatic as they were, are enough to persuade the agencies to abandon their traditional reluctance to work closely together.
At an emergency summit in Brussels last month, EU leaders said that national intelligence agencies should hand over to Europol any relevant information on terrorism. And they approved the creation of an anti-terrorist intelligence unit to be based at Europol's headquarters in The Hague.
Europol, which is headed by a German detective, Mr Jⁿrgen Storbeck, already has a sophisticated system of data collection on cross-border crime, ranging from drug smuggling to terrorism. But unlike national law enforcement agencies, Europol is limited to the gathering, analysis and exchange of information. Europol can give national police forces tips for their investigations but until now, the agency has not been allowed to initiate investigations itself.
The European Commission insists that there is no question of Europol becoming a European FBI. And the anti-terrorist squad, which has initially been set up for six months, has a staff of only about a dozen experts.
According to one very senior EU official with an intimate knowledge of the intelligence world, last month's attacks have not made Europe's intelligence services more enthusiastic about sharing information. The reason for their reluctance is simple and compelling - they fear that sharing information could leave spies more vulnerable to exposure.
Building up a network of human intelligence sources is a lengthy, difficult and expensive enterprise. No national intelligence service is willing to put such a network at risk for the sake of closer European co-operation. More importantly, in extreme cases, exposure of such networks could place the personal security of intelligence officers at risk.
Despite these reservations, the political pressure to take all necessary steps to combat terrorism is immense and EU leaders have instructed their officials to make every effort to improve co-operation.
The Commission is exploiting last month's events to push forward the creation of a European "area of freedom, security and justice" that was announced at a summit in the Finnish town of Tampere two years ago. This involves closer co-operation on asylum and immigration, criminal law and policing.
Besides beefing up Europol, the EU leaders have given a boost to Eurojust, an agency to co-ordinate the work of national prosecuting authorities that is due to start work officially at the end of the year.
The German chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schr÷der, has stated that Europe needs an equivalent of the FBI and his French counterpart, Mr Lionel Jospin, has called for Europol to be turned into a Europe-wide police force.