Why Europe can’t afford to alienate Britain

Attempts by some EU leaders to bargain with security is likely to backfire on the continent

The news that the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has disrupted terrorist operations in four European countries in the last year should not be a surprise. Britain has the best intelligence agencies in Europe and when I worked in government — in the Home Office and in Number 10 [the British prime minister’s official residence] — our agencies played a vital role in arresting terrorists and disrupting plots across the continent.

So what is Michel Barnier, the European Union’s Brexit negotiator, doing by trying to make UK-EU security cooperation conditional? Only last month, he had said: “Solidarity is not to be negotiated,” and warned Britain not to seek a “trade-off between security and trade”. And he was not alone in doing so. Other European leaders had said the same.

For its part, the government says Britain is “unconditionally committed” to maintaining European security. This is also unsurprising: Britain, along with France, has long been Europe’s strongest defence and security player. Through the formation of the European Counter-Terrorism Group, EU measures such as the Passenger Name Records Directive and bilateral intelligence work, Britain has led the way for decades. But now Barnier talks of conditionality, the very thing he had once rejected. Security cooperation, he says, “is made possible by trust founded on common rules and safeguards, shared decisions, joint supervision and implementation and a common Court of Justice”. Without these things, he threatened, “you lose the benefits of this cooperation”.

The first problem with Barnier’s position is his distinction between what he calls “internal” and “external security”, or the difference between domestic criminal justice work and intelligence and defence cooperation. He seems to think the former requires EU information sharing and — separately — the latter demands the cooperation of intelligence agencies and the military. This is misconceived. At a time when hostile foreign states such as Russia engage in hybrid threats — combining military force with cyber attacks, state-sponsored criminality and media manipulation — and the terrorist threat is both home-grown and international, the two forms of cooperation are inseparable.

Blatant hypocrisy

The second problem is that British Prime Minister Theresa May has already agreed to many of the conditions that Barnier wants to impose. He says the UK must meet standards on data protection, respect human rights and agree processes for enforcement and dispute resolution. In the government’s security paper last September, and in May’s Munich speech in February — both before Barnier’s intervention on Tuesday — the government said it would guarantee each of these things.

The third problem is Barnier’s blatant hypocrisy. He says there is no connection between security and trade, but the EU wants to block Britain from Galileo, the satellite system, to protect French and German industry. Elsewhere in the talks, he says the Northern Ireland peace process is sacrosanct, but he wants to bar the UK from the European Arrest Warrant, which is vital to cross-border justice in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Since 2016, there have been 45 terror attacks in seven European countries: Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden and Finland. Europe is dealing with thousands of its most dangerous citizens as they return from fighting in Syria. The continent faces the ongoing migrant crisis, cyber attacks from hostile foreign states and a revanchist Russia, all as United States President Donald Trump proves himself an unreliable ally.

Britain is a nuclear power, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and has armed forces with a global reach. And it has the best “signals intelligence” capability in Europe, which, among many things, helps UK’s allies to identify terrorists returning from Syria. In contrast, Europe’s defences against mounting threats are pitifully weak.

So, Barnier ought to be careful. Britain’s leaders may be unconditionally committed to the security of Europe, but if the EU tries to hurt us, the next generation of politicians — and the public — might not be so generous. Solidarity works in both directions.

■ Nicholas Timothy is a columnist. He was the Joint Downing Street chief-of-staff to British Prime Minister Theresa May.