French publication ranks Estonian intelligence eighth in Europe

A study by French publication L’Express ranks Estonia’s intelligence capabilities eighth among European countries, ERR reported. Security expert Meelis Oidsalu called the ranking unprecedented but said it primarily measures reputation.

L’Express published its so-called intelligence services ranking last week. The top five were the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Ukraine and Germany. Lithuania ranked 18th and Latvia 21st, while Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia received no points and were left off the list.

The points were awarded by a 60-member jury. Each member selected the five best intelligence services, which received between one and five points according to their ranking. The judges were current or former intelligence officials from 25 countries.

Oidsalu said the method could produce distortions because intelligence professionals had not previously assessed one another’s work by assigning numerical scores. He added that the sample of 60 people was small enough to allow for random distortions.

He said the study measured how European intelligence services view one another. Their perspective was important because intelligence professionals broadly understand what information has value in intelligence work, he said.

However, the ranking did not include assessments from the clients of intelligence agencies, including governments and defence forces. Oidsalu said information that intelligence officials consider impressive or difficult may not necessarily be highly valuable to those who use it.

He nevertheless said the study contributed to transparency in the security sector.

The ranking was led by the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. Oidsalu said the order reflected intelligence funding. The British intelligence community has an annual budget of about five billion euros, he said, while the Baltic states must manage with several tens of millions of euros per agency.

Estonia received 27 points from the intelligence experts, earning eighth place.

The study praised Estonia’s cyber capabilities and its intelligence based on open-source data. It also highlighted assessments of Russia published in the annual reports of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

Oidsalu said Estonian intelligence had a very strong reputation, although that reputation was not always justified. He said the main challenge for the foreign intelligence services of all three Baltic states was how much information they could actually collect.

Estonia’s analytical capabilities were highly regarded, Oidsalu said. However, since the start of the war in Ukraine, a large number of think tanks have entered the field and begun collecting intelligence from public sources, while commercial space-based intelligence has also developed.

He said the analytical role traditionally performed by the Baltic states’ foreign intelligence services no longer provided as much added value. More attention was needed on how to collect information and use artificial intelligence to take analysis to a new level, he said.

Oidsalu also said the study unfairly omitted Estonia’s Internal Security Service, known as kapo. In his assessment, Estonia’s counterintelligence was stronger than its foreign intelligence.