The Dutch government has quietly removed Google tracking tools from job listings for its intelligence services over concerns that the data would expose aspirant spies to U.S. surveillance. The intervention would put an end to Google’s processing of the data of job seekers interested in applying to spy service jobs, after members of parliament in The Hague raised security concerns. The move comes at a moment when trust between the Netherlands and the United States is fraying. It reflects wider European unease — heightened by Donald Trump’s return to the White House — about American tech giants having access to some of their most sensitive government data. The heads of the AIVD and MIVD, the Netherlands’ civilian and military intelligence services, said in October that they were reviewing how to share information with American counterparts over political interference and human rights concerns. In the Netherlands, government vacancies are listed on a central online portal, which subsequently redirects applicants to specific institutions’ or agencies’ websites, including those of the security services. The government has now quietly pulled the plug on Google Analytics for intelligence-service postings, according to security expert Bert Hubert, who first raised the alarm about the trackers earlier this year. Hubert told POLITICO the job postings for intelligence services jobs no longer contained the same Google tracking technologies at least since November. The move was first reported by Follow the Money. The military intelligence service MIVD declined to comment. The interior ministry, which oversees the general intelligence service AIVD, did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication. In a statement, Communications Manager for Google Mathilde Méchin said: “Businesses, not Google Analytics, own and control the data they collect and Google Analytics only processes it at their direction. This data can be deleted at any time.” “Any data sent to Google Analytics for measurement does not identify individuals, and we have strict policies against advertising based on sensitive information,” Méchin said. ‘FUTURE EMPLOYEES AT RISK’ Derk Boswijk, a center-right Dutch lawmaker, raised the alarm about the tracking of job applicants in parliamentary questions to the government in January. He said that while China and Russia have traditionally been viewed as the biggest security risks, it is unacceptable for any foreign government — allied or not — to have a view into Dutch intelligence recruitment. “I still see the U.S. as our most important ally,” Boswijk told POLITICO. “But to be honest, we’re seeing that the policies of the Trump administration and the European countries no longer necessarily align, and I think we should adapt accordingly.” The government told Boswijk in February it had enabled privacy settings on data gathered by Google. The government has yet to comment on Boswijk’s latest questions submitted in November. Hubert, the cybersecurity expert, said the concerns over tracking were justified. Even highly technical data like IP addresses, device fingerprints and browsing patterns can help foreign governments, including adversaries such as China, narrow down who might be seeking a job inside an intelligence agency, he said. “By leaking job applications so broadly, the Dutch intelligence agencies put their future employees at risk, while also harming their own interests,” said Hubert, adding it could discourage sought-after cybersecurity talent that agencies are desperate to attract. Hubert previously served on a watchdog committee overseeing intelligence agencies’ requests to use hacking tools, surveillance and wiretapping.  One open question raised by Dutch parliamentarians is how to gain control over the data that Google gathered on aspiring spies in past years. “I don’t know what happens with the data Google Analytics already has, that’s still a black box to me,” said Sarah El Boujdaini, a lawmaker for the centrist-liberal Democrats 66 party who oversees digital affairs. The episode is likely to add fuel to efforts to wean off U.S. technologies — which are taking place across Europe, as part of the bloc’s “technological sovereignty” drive. European Parliament members last month urged the institution to move away from U.S. tech services, in a letter to the president obtained by POLITICO. In the Netherlands, parliament members have urged public institutions to move away from digital infrastructure run by U.S. firms like Microsoft, over security concerns. “If we can’t even safeguard applications to our secret services, how do you think the rest is going?” Hubert asked. The country also hosts the International Criminal Court, where Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan previously lost access to his Microsoft-hosted email account after he was targeted with American sanctions over issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ICC in October confirmed to POLITICO it was moving away from using Microsoft Office applications to German-based openDesk.

BRUSSELS — European Parliament members this week rubbished the EU executive’s Democracy Shield plan, an initiative aimed at bolstering the bloc’s defenses against Russian sabotage, election meddling and cyber and disinformation campaigns. The Commission’s plan “feels more like a European neighborhood watch group chat,” Kim van Sparrentak, a Dutch member of the Greens group, told a committee meeting on Monday evening. On Tuesday, EU Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath faced the brunt of that censure before the full Parliament plenary, as centrist and left-leaning lawmakers panned the plan for its weaknesses and far-right members warned that Brussels is rolling out a propaganda machine of its own. “We want to see more reform, more drive and more actions,” Swedish center-right lawmaker Tomas Tobé, who leads the Parliament’s report on the matter, told McGrath. The European Democracy Shield was unveiled Nov. 12 as a response to Russia’s escalating meddling in the bloc. In past months, Europe has been awash in hybrid threats. Security services linked railway disruptions in Poland and the Baltics to Russian-linked saboteurs, while unexplained drone flyovers have crippled public services in Belgium and probed critical infrastructure sites across the Nordics. At the same time, pro-Kremlin influence campaigns have promoted deepfake videos and fabricated scandals and divisive narratives ahead of elections in Moldova, Slovakia and across the EU, often using local intermediaries to mask their origins.   Together these tactics inform a pressure campaign that European security officials say is designed to exhaust institutions, undermine trust and stretch Europe’s defenses.  The Democracy Shield was a key pledge President Ursula von der Leyen made last year. But the actual strategy presented this month lacks teeth and concrete actions, and badly fails to meet the challenge, opponents said. While “full of new ways to exchange information,” the strategy presents “no other truly new or effective proposals to actually take action,” said van Sparrentak, the Dutch Greens lawmaker.  EU RESPONSE A WORK IN PROGRESS Much of the Shield’s text consists of calls to support existing initiatives or proposed new ones to come later down the line.   One of the pillars of the initiative, a Democratic Resilience Center that would pool information on hybrid warfare and interference, was announced by von der Leyen in September but became a major sticking point during the drafting of the Shield before its Nov. 12 unveiling.  The final proposal for the Center lacks teeth, critics said. Instead of an independent agency, as the Parliament had wanted, it will be a forum for exchanging information, two Commission officials told POLITICO.  The Center needs “a clear legal basis” and should be “independent” with “proper funding,” Tobé said Tuesday.   Austrian liberal Helmut Brandstätter said in a comment to POLITICO that “some aspects of the center are already embedded in the EEAS [the EU’s diplomatic service] and other institutions. Instead of duplicating them, we should strive to consolidate and streamline our tools.” EU countries also have to opt into participating in the center, creating a risk that national authorities neglect its work.  RIGHT BLASTS EU ‘CENSORSHIP’  For right-wing and far-right forces, the Shield reflects what they see as EU censorship and meddling by Brussels in European national politics.   “The stated goals of the Democracy Shield look good on paper but we all know that behind these noble goals, what you actually want is to build a political machinery without an electoral mandate,” said Csaba Dömötör, a Hungarian MEP from the far-right Patriots group.   “You cannot appropriate the powers and competence of sovereign countries and create a tool which is going to allow you to have an influence on the decisions of elections” in individual EU countries, said Polish hard-right MEP Beata Szydło.   Those arguments echo some of the criticisms by the United States’ MAGA movement of European social media regulation, which figures like Vice President JD Vance have previously compared to Soviet-era censorship laws.  The Democracy Shield strategy includes attempts to support European media organizations and fact-checking to stem the flood of disinformation around political issues. Romanian right-wing MEP Claudiu-Richard Târziu said her country’s 2024 presidential elections had been cancelled due to “an alleged foreign intervention” that remained unproven.  “This Democracy Shield should not create a mechanism whereby other member states could go through what Romania experienced in 2024 — this is an attack against democracy — and eventually the voters will have zero confidence,” he said.  In a closing statement on Tuesday at the plenary, Commissioner McGrath defended the Democracy Shield from its hard-right critics but did not respond to more specific criticisms of the proposal.  “To those who question the Shield and who say it’s about censorship. What I say to you is that I and my colleagues in the European Commission will be the very first people to defend your right to level robust debate in a public forum,” he said.

BRUSSELS — CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a low-key stop in Brussels this week, meeting top EU foreign and intelligence officials to deliver a not-so-subtle message: You can still trust us. Ratcliffe met with the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, as well as senior officials from the EU Intelligence and Situation Center (INTCEN) and the EU Military Staff Intelligence Directorate (EUMS), according to three people with knowledge of the meeting. The goal, two officials said, was to steady nerves and reaffirm Washington’s commitment to intelligence-sharing — as some European capitals grow uneasy about the direction of U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump. The Trump administration’s erratic policy shifts on Ukraine — such as abruptly halting the sharing of battlefield intelligence with Kyiv last March — and its push to politicize intelligence by appointing Trump loyalists have shaken European confidence in Washington’s reliability. Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman from Texas, built his reputation as one of Trump’s fiercest defenders on Capitol Hill — particularly during the first impeachment proceedings, when he used his perch on the House Intelligence Committee to attack the inquiry. Officially, Ratcliffe was in town to brief the North Atlantic Council, the political decision-making body of NATO, one diplomat said. But his side meeting with the bloc’s foreign policy arm, the EEAS, sent a clear signal: Langley wants to keep lines open. The expectation is that the meeting won’t be a one-off: “Should be regular from now on,” one official said. Ratcliffe and his EU counterparts also discussed shared challenges, including Russia, China and the Middle East. The diplomatic push comes at a sensitive moment. European services are working to bury decades of distrust to build a shared EU intelligence operation to counter Russian aggression while they rethink their intel-sharing arrangements with the U.S. The Dutch civil and military intelligence service told local paper De Volkskrant earlier this month that they’d halted some exchanges, citing political interference and human rights concerns.

MILAN — Nothing about the sand-colored façade of the palazzo tucked behind Milan’s Duomo cathedral suggested that inside it a team of computer engineers were building a database to gather private and damaging information about Italy’s political elite — and use it to try to control them.   The platform, called Beyond, pulled together hundreds of thousands of records from state databases — including flagged financial transactions and criminal investigations — to create detailed profiles on politicians, business leaders and other prominent figures.  Police wiretaps recorded someone they identified as Samuele Calamucci, allegedly the technical mastermind of the group, boasting that the dossiers gave them the power to “screw over all of Italy.”  The operation collapsed in fall 2024, when a two-year investigation culminated in the arrests of four people, with a further 60 questioned. The alleged ringleaders have denied ever directly accessing state databases, while lower-level operatives maintain they only conducted open-source searches and believed their actions were legal. Police files indicate that key suspects claimed they were operating with the tacit approval of the Italian state.  After months of questioning and plea bargaining, 15 of the accused are set to enter their pleas at the first court hearing in October.   The disclosures were shocking, not only because of the confidentiality of the data but also the high-profile nature of the targets, which included former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Ignazio La Russa, co-founder of the ruling Brothers of Italy party and president of the Senate.  The scandal underscores a novel reality: that in the digital era, privacy is a relic. While dossiers and kompromat have long been tools of political warfare, hackers today, commanded by the highest bidder, can access information to exploit decision-makers’ weaknesses — from private indiscretions to financial vulnerabilities. The result is a political and business class highly exposed to external pressures, heightening fears about the resilience of democratic institutions in an era where data is both power and liability.  POLITICO obtained thousands of pages of police wiretap transcripts and arrest warrants and spoke with alleged perpetrators, their victims and officials investigating the scheme. Together, the documents and interviews reveal an intricate plot to build a database filled with confidential and compromising data — and a business plan to exploit it for both legal and illegal means.  On the surface, the group presented itself as a corporate intelligence firm, courting high-profile clients by claiming expertise in resolving complex risk management issues such as commercial fraud, corruption and infiltration by organized crime.   Banca Mediolanum, said it had paid “€3,000 to Equalize to gather more public information regarding a company that could have been the subject of a potential deal, managed by our investment bank.” | Diego Puletto/Getty Images Prosecutors accuse the gang of compiling damaging dossiers by illegally accessing phones, computers and state databases containing information ranging from tax records to criminal convictions. The data could be used to pressure and threaten victims or fed to journalists to discredit them.  The alleged perpetrators include a former star police investigator, the top manager of Milan’s trade fair complex and several cybersecurity experts prominent in Italy’s tech scene. All have denied wrongdoing.  SUPERCOP TURNED SUPERCROOK  When the gang first drew the attention of investigators in the summer of 2022, it was almost by accident.  Police were tracking a northern Italian gangster when he arranged a meeting with retired police inspector Carmine Gallo at a coffee bar in downtown Milan. Gallo, a veteran in the fight against organized crime, was a familiar face in Italy’s law enforcement circles. The meeting raised suspicions, and authorities put Gallo under surveillance — and inadvertently uncovered the gang’s wider operations.  Gallo, who died in March 2025, was a towering figure in Italian law enforcement. He helped solve high-profile cases such as the 1995 murder of Maurizio Gucci — carried out by the fashion mogul’s ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani and her clairvoyant — and the 1997 kidnapping of Milanese businesswoman Alessandra Sgarella by the ‘ndrangheta organized crime syndicate.  Yet Gallo’s career was not without controversy. Over four decades, he cultivated ties to organized crime networks and faced repeated investigations for overstepping legal boundaries. He ultimately received a two-year suspended sentence for sharing official secrets and assisting criminals.  When he retired from the force in 2018, Gallo illegally carted off investigative material such as transcripts of interviews with moles, mafia family trees and photofits, prosecutors’ documents show. His modus operandi was to tell municipal employees to “get a coffee and come back in half an hour” while he photographed documents, he boasted in wiretaps.  Still, Gallo’s work ethic remained relentless. In 2019, he co-founded Equalize — the IT company that hosted the Beyond database — with his business partner Enrico Pazzali, presenting the firm as a corporate risk intelligence company.  Gallo’s years as a police officer gave him a unique advantage: He could leverage relationships with former colleagues in law enforcement and intelligence to get them to carry out illegal searches on his behalf. Some of the information he obtained was then repackaged as reputational dossiers for clients, commanding fees of up to €15,000.  Gallo also cashed in his influence for favors, such as procuring passports for friends and acquaintances. Investigators recorded conversations in which he bragged of sourcing a passport for a convicted mafioso under investigation for kidnapping, who planned to flee to the United Arab Emirates.  The supercop-turned-supercriminal claimed that Equalize had a full overview of Italian criminal operations, extending even to countries like Australia and Vietnam.  When investigators raided the group’s headquarters, they found thousands of files and dossiers spanning decades of Italian criminal and political history. The hackers even claimed to have — as part of what they called their “infinite archive” — video evidence of the late Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s so-called bunga bunga parties, which investigators called “a blackmail tool of the highest value.”   Enrico Pazzali cultivated close ties to right-wing politicians, including Attilio Fontana, president of the Lombardy region, and maintained a close association with high-level intelligence officials. | Alessandro Bremec/Getty Images Gallo’s sudden death of a heart attack six months into the investigation stirred unease among prosecutors. They noted that while an initial autopsy found no signs of trauma or injection, the absence of such evidence does not necessarily rule out interference. Investigators have ordered toxicology tests.  ‘HANDSOME UNCLE’  Gallo’s collaborator Pazzalli, a well-known businessman who headed Milan’s prestigious Fondazione Fiera Milano, the country’s largest exhibition center, was Equalize’s alleged frontman.  Pazzali, through his lawyer, declined to comment to POLITICO about the allegations.  The Fiera, a magnet for money and power, made Pazzali a heavy hitter in Milanese circles. Having built a successful career across IT, energy and other sectors, and boasting a full head of steely gray hair, he was known to some by the nickname “Zio Bello,” or handsome uncle.   Pazzali cultivated close ties to right-wing politicians, including Attilio Fontana, president of the Lombardy region, and maintained a close association with high-level intelligence officials. He would meet clients in a chauffeur-driven black Tesla X, complete with a blue flashing light on the roof — the kind typically reserved for high-ranking officials.  Since 2019, Pazzali held a 95 percent stake in Equalize. If Gallo’s role was sourcing confidential information, Pazzali’s was winning high-profile clients, the prosecutors allege. Leveraging his reputation and political connections, he helped secure business from banks, industrial conglomerates, multinationals, and international law firms, including pasta giant Barilla, the Italian subsidiary of Heineken, and energy powerhouse Eni.   Documents show that Eni paid Equalize €377,000. Roberto Albini, a spokesperson for the energy giant, told POLITICO that the firm had commissioned Equalize “to support its strategy and defense in the context of several criminal and civil cases.” He added that Eni was not aware of any illegal activity by the company.  Marlous den Bieman, corporate communications manager for Heineken, said the brewer had “ceased all collaboration with Equalize and is actively cooperating with authorities in their investigation of the company’s practices.”  Barilla declined to comment.  Italy’s third-largest bank, Banca Mediolanum, said it had paid “€3,000 to Equalize to gather more public information regarding a company that could have been the subject of a potential deal, managed by our investment bank.” The bank added, “Of course we were not aware that Equalize was in general conducting its business also through the adoption of illicit procedures.”  The group’s reach extended beyond Italy. In February 2023, it was hired by Israeli state intelligence agents in a €1 million operation to trace the financial flows from the accounts of wealthy individuals to the Russian mercenary network Wagner. In exchange, the Israelis promised to hand over intelligence on the illicit trafficking of Iranian gas through Italy — a commodity that, they suggested, might be of interest to Equalize’s client, the energy giant Eni.  Equalize rapidly grew into a formidable private investigation operation. Police reports noted that Pazzali recognized data as “a weapon for enormous economic and reputational gains,” adding, “Equalize’s raison d’être is to provide … Pazzali with information and dossiers to be used for the achievement of his political and economic aims.”  During the 2023 election campaign for the presidency of the Lombardy region, Pazzali ordered dossiers on close affiliates of former mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti, who was challenging his preferred candidate, the far-right Fontana.  Prime Minister Matteo Renzi warned of a deeper political risk associated with the gang. | Vincenzo Nuzzolese/Getty Images A spokesman for Fontana called the allegation “science-fiction” and said “nothing was offered to the president of the region, he did not ask for anything, and he certainly did not pay anything.”   In 2022, Pazzali was in the running to manage Italy’s 2026 Winter Olympics as chief executive. Wiretaps suggested he ordered a dossier on his competitor, football club AC Milan’s Chairman Paolo Scaroni, but found nothing on him.  Business was booming, but Pazzali and Gallo were thinking ahead. They had become reliant on cops willing to leak information, and those officers could be spooked — or caught in the act. That was a vulnerability.  They started to envisage a more sophisticated operation: a platform that collated all the data the group had in its possession and could generate the prized dossiers with the click of a button, erasing the need for bribes and cutting manpower costs — a repository of high-level secrets that, once operational, would give Pazzali, Gallo, and their team unprecedented power in Italy.  Pazzali declined to comment on the investigation. He is due to plead before a judge at a preliminary hearing in October. ‘THE PROFESSOR’ AND THE BOYS   Enter Samuele Calamucci, the coding brain of the operation.  Calamucci is from a small town just outside Milan, and before he began his career in cybersecurity, he was involved in stonemasonry.   Unlike his partners Gallo and Pazzali, Calamucci wasn’t a known face in the city — and he had worked hard to keep it that way. He ran his own private investigation firm, Mercury Advisor, from the same offices as Equalize, handling the company’s IT operations as an outside contractor.  Calamucci knew his way around Italian government IT systems, too. In wiretapped conversations, he claimed to have helped build the digital infrastructure for Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency and to have worked for the secret services’ Department of Information for Security.  Known within the gang as “the professor,” Calamucci’s role was to recruit and manage a team of 30 to 40 programmers he called the ragazzi — the boys.  With his best recruits he began to build Beyond in 2022, the platform designed to be the digital equivalent of an all-seeing eye.  To populate it, Calamucci and his team purchased data from the dark web, exploited access through government IT maintenance contracts and siphoned intelligence from state databases whenever they could, prosecutors said.  Beyond gave Pazzali, Gallo, and their gang a treasure trove of compromising information on political and business figures in a searchable platform. Wiretaps indicated the plan was to sell access via subscription to select clients, including international law firm Dentons and some of the Big Four consultancies like Deloitte, KPMG, and EY. | Aleksander Kalka/Getty Images In one police-recorded conversation, Calamucci boasted of a hard drive holding 800,000 dossiers. Through his lawyer, Calamucci declined to comment.  “We all thought the requested reports served the good of the country,” said one of the hackers, granted anonymity to speak freely. “Ninety percent of the reports carried out were about energy projects, which required open-source criminal records or membership in mafia syndicates, given that a large portion concerned the South.” Only 5 percent of the jobs they carried out were for individuals to conduct an analysis of enemies or competitors, he added.  The hackers were also “not allowed to know” who was coming into Equalize’s office from the outside. Meetings were held behind closed doors in Gallo’s office or in conference rooms, the hacker told POLITICO, explaining that the analysts were unaware of the company’s dynamics and the people it associated with.  Beyond gave Pazzali, Gallo, and their gang a treasure trove of compromising information on political and business figures in a searchable platform. Wiretaps indicated the plan was to sell access via subscription to select clients, including international law firm Dentons and some of the Big Four consultancies like Deloitte, KPMG, and EY.  Dentons declined to comment. Deloitte and EY did not respond to a request for comment. Audee Van Winkel, senior communication officer for KPMG in Belgium, where one of the alleged gang members worked, said the consultancy did not have any knowledge or records of KPMG in Belgium working with the platform.   ‘INTELLIGENCE MERCENARIES’  In Italy’s sprawling private investigation scene, Equalize was a relative newcomer. But Gallo, Pazzali and their associates had something going for them: They were well-connected.  One alleged member of the organization, Gabriele Pegoraro, had worked as an external cybersecurity expert for intelligence services and had previously made headlines as the IT genius who helped capture a fugitive terrorist.  Pegoraro said he “carried out only lawful operations using publicly available sources” and “was in the dark about how the information was used.”  According to wiretaps, Calamucci and Gallo had worked with several intelligence agents to provide surveillance to protect criminal informants.   On one occasion, Calamucci explained to a subordinate that the relationship with the secret services “was essential” to continue running Equalize undisturbed. “We are mercenaries for [Italian] intelligence,” he was heard saying by police listening in on a meeting with foreign agents at his office.   The services also helped with data searches for the group and created a mask of cover for the gang, prosecutors believe. A hacker proudly claimed that Equalize had even received computers handed down from Italy’s foreign intelligence agency, while law enforcement watched from bugs planted in the ceiling.  THE PROSECUTION  In October 2024, the music stopped.  Prosecutors placed four of the alleged gang members, including Gallo and Calamucci, under house arrest and another 60 people under investigation. They brought forward charges including conspiracy to hack, corruption, illegal accessing of data and the violation of official secrets.  Franco Gabrielli, a former director of Italy’s civil intelligence services, warned that even the toughest of sentences are unlikely to put an end to the practice. | Alessandro Bremec/Getty Images “Just as the Stasi destroyed the lives of so many people using a mixture of fabricated and collected information, so did these guys,” said Leonida Reitano, an Italian open-source investigator who studied the case. “They collected sensitive information, including medical reports, and used it to compromise their targets.”  News of what the gang had done dropped like a bombshell on Italy’s political class. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told reporters at the time that the affair was “unacceptable,” while Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi warned the parliament that the hackers were “altering the rules of democracy.”  The Equalize scandal “is not only the most serious in the history of the Italian Republic but represents a real and actual attack on democracy,” said Angelo Bonelli, MP and member of the opposition Green Europe.  Prime Minister Renzi warned of a deeper political risk associated with the gang. “It is clear that Equalize are very close to the leaders of the right-wing parties, and intended to build a powerful organization, although it is not yet certain how deep an impact they had,” he told POLITICO. Renzi is seeking damages as a civil plaintiff in the eventual criminal trial.  Equalize was liquidated in March, and some of the alleged hackers have since taken on legitimate roles within the cybersecurity sector.  There are many unresolved questions around the case. Investigators and observers are still trying to determine the full extent of Equalize’s ties to Italian intelligence agencies, and whether any clients were aware of or complicit in the methods used to compile sensitive dossiers. Interviews with intelligence officials conducted during the investigation were never transcribed, and testimony given to a parliamentary committee remains classified. Police documents are heavily redacted, leaving the identities of key figures and the full scope of the operation unclear.  While Equalize is unprecedented in its scale, efforts to collect information on political opponents have “become an Italian tradition,” said the political historian Giovanni Orsina. Spying and political chicanery during and after the Cold War has damaged democracy and undermined trust in public institutions, made worse by a lethargic justice system that can take years if not decades to deliver justice.   “It adds to the perception that Italy is a country in which you can never find the truth,” Orsina said.  Franco Gabrielli, a former director of Italy’s civil intelligence services, warned that even the toughest of sentences are unlikely to put an end to the practice. “It just increases the costs, because if I risk more, I charge more,” he said.   “We must reduce the damage, put in place procedures, mechanisms,” he added. “But, unfortunately, all over the world, even where people earn more there are always black sheep, people who are corrupted. It’s human nature.” 

BRUSSELS — First it was telecom snooping. Now Europe is growing worried that Huawei could turn the lights off. The Chinese tech giant is at the heart of a brewing storm over the security of Europe’s energy grids. Lawmakers are writing to the European Commission to urge it to “restrict high-risk vendors” from solar energy systems, in a letter seen by POLITICO. Such restrictions would target Huawei first and foremost, as the dominant Chinese supplier of critical parts of these systems. The fears center around solar panel inverters, a piece of technology that turns solar panels’ electricity into current that flows into the grid. China is a dominant supplier of these inverters, and Huawei is its biggest player. Because the inverters are hooked up to the internet, security experts warn the inverters could be tampered with or shut down through remote access, potentially causing dangerous surges or drops in electricity in Europe’s networks. The warnings come as European governments have woken up to the risks of being reliant on other regions for critical services — from Russian gas to Chinese critical raw materials and American digital services. The bloc is in a stand-off with Beijing over trade in raw materials, and has faced months of pressure from Washington on how Brussels regulates U.S. tech giants. Cybersecurity authorities are close to finalizing work on a new “toolbox” to de-risk tech supply chains, with solar panels among its key target sectors, alongside connected cars and smart cameras. Two members of the European Parliament, Dutch liberal Bart Groothuis and Slovak center-right lawmaker Miriam Lexmann, drafted a letter warning the European Commission of the risks. “We urge you to propose immediate and binding measures to restrict high-risk vendors from our critical infrastructure,” the two wrote. The members had gathered the support of a dozen colleagues by Wednesday and are canvassing for more to join the initiative before sending the letter mid next week.   According to research by trade body SolarPower Europe, Chinese firms control approximately 65 percent of the total installed power in the solar sector. The largest company in the European market is Huawei, a tech giant that is considered a high-risk vendor of telecom equipment. The second-largest firm is Sungrow, which is also Chinese, and controls about half the amount of solar power as Huawei. Huawei’s market power recently allowed it to make its way back into SolarPower Europe, the solar sector’s most prominent lobby association in Brussels, despite an ongoing Belgian bribery investigation focused on the firm’s lobbying activities in Brussels that saw it banned from meeting with European Commission and Parliament officials. Security hawks are now upping the ante. Cybersecurity experts and European manufacturers say the Chinese conglomerate and its peers could hack into Europe’s power grid.  “They can disable safety parameters. They can set it on fire,” Erika Langerová, a cybersecurity researcher at the Czech Technical University in Prague, said in a media briefing hosted by the U.S. Mission to the EU in September.  Even switching solar installation off and on again could disrupt energy supply, Langerová said. “When you do it on one installation, it’s not a problem, but then you do it on thousands of installations it becomes a problem because the … compound effect of these sudden changes in the operation of the device can destabilize the power grid.”  Surges in electricity supply can trigger wider blackouts, as seen in Spain and Portugal in April. | Matias Chiofalo/Europa Press via Getty Images Surges in electricity supply can trigger wider blackouts, as seen in Spain and Portugal in April. Some governments have already taken further measures. Last November, Lithuania imposed a ban on remote access by Chinese firms to renewable energy installations above 100 kilowatts, effectively stopping the use of Chinese inverters. In September, the Czech Republic issued a warning on the threat posed by Chinese remote access via components including solar inverters. And in Germany, security officials already in 2023 told lawmakers that an “energy management component” from Huawei had them on alert, leading to a government probe of the firm’s equipment. CHINESE CONTROL, EU RESPONSE  The arguments leveled against Chinese manufacturers of solar inverters echo those heard from security experts in previous years, in debates on whether or not to block companies like video-sharing app TikTok, airport scanner maker Nuctech and — yes — Huawei’s 5G network equipment. Distrust of Chinese technology has skyrocketed. Under President Xi Jinping, the Beijing government has rolled out regulations forcing Chinese companies to cooperate with security services’ requests to share data and flag vulnerabilities in their software. It has led to Western concerns that it opens the door to surveillance and snooping. One of the most direct threats involves remote management from China of products embedded in European critical infrastructure. Manufacturers have remote access to install updates and maintenance. Europe has also grown heavily reliant on Chinese tech suppliers, particularly when it comes to renewable energy, which is powering an increasing proportion of European energy. Domestic manufacturers of solar panels have enough supply to fill the gap that any EU action to restrict Chinese inverters would create, Langerová said. But Europe does not yet have enough battery or wind manufacturers — two clean energy sector China also dominates. China’s dominance also undercuts Europe’s own tech sector and comes with risks of economic coercion. Until only a few years ago, European firms were competitive, before being undercut by heavily subsidized Chinese products, said Tobias Gehrke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. China on the other hand does not allow foreign firms in its market because of cybersecurity concerns, he said. The European Union previously developed a 5G security toolbox to reduce its dependence on Huawei over these fears. It is also working on a similar initiative, known as the ICT supply chain toolbox, to help national governments scan their wider digital infrastructure for weak points, with a view to blocking or reduce the use of “high-risk suppliers.” According to Groothuis and Lexmann, “binding legislation to restrict risky vendors in our critical infrastructure is urgently required” across the European Union. Until legislation is passed, the EU should put temporary measures in place, they said in their letter.  Huawei did not respond to requests for comment before publication. This article has been updated.

BRUSSELS — Intelligence agencies across Europe are burying decades of distrust and starting to build a shared intelligence operation to counter Russian aggression — a move accelerated by the new American capriciousness in supporting its traditional allies. In the past year, many national capitals have embedded intelligence officials in their Brussels representation offices. The European Union’s in-house intelligence unit has started briefing top-level officials. And the bloc is toying with the idea to build up stronger, CIA-style powers — long considered unthinkable. The push for deeper intelligence cooperation accelerated sharply after the Trump administration abruptly halted the sharing of battlefield intelligence with Kyiv last March. Donald Trump “deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing the services of Europe together,” said one Western intelligence official, who was granted anonymity to disclose details of how they cooperated with American counterparts. POLITICO spoke with seven intelligence and security officials who described how the rupture in transatlantic trust is driving Europe’s spy agencies to move faster — and closer — than ever before. It’s all part of a bigger reconsideration of practices. European intelligence services have also started reviewing more closely how they share information with U.S. counterparts. The Dutch military and civil intelligence services told local paper De Volkskrant on Saturday they’d stopped sharing certain information with their U.S. counterparts, citing political interference and human rights concerns. Officials fear that transatlantic forums, including the defense alliance NATO, will become less reliable platforms to share intelligence. “There is a sense that there could be less commitment on the part of the United States in the months to come in sharing the intelligence they have — both inside NATO and at large,” said Antonio Missiroli, the former Assistant-Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges at NATO. Security services are still overcoming decades-old trust issues. New revelations that Hungarian intelligence officials disguised as diplomats tried to infiltrate the EU institutions show how governments within the EU still keep close watch over each other. To cope with the distrust, some leading spy agencies are pushing to set up groups of trusted countries instead of running things through Brussels. CLUB DE BERNE Unlike tight-knit spy alliances like the Five Eyes, European Union member countries have long struggled to forge strong partnerships on intelligence sharing. National security remains firmly in the hands of national capitals, with Brussels playing only a coordinating role. One way European services have communicated traditionally is through a secretive network known as the Club de Berne, created nearly 50 years ago in the Swiss city it is named after. The club has no headquarters, no secretariat and meets only twice a year. In recent years, the group has coordinated its meetings to roughly align with the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. But the Club is hardly a mirror image of the EU. Malta has never joined, Bulgaria only recently signed on, and Austria was suspended for a time over concerns it was too soft on Moscow before being readmitted in 2022. Non-EU countries such as Switzerland, Norway and the U.K. are also members. Donald Trump “deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing the services of Europe together,” said one Western intelligence official, who was granted anonymity to disclose details of how they cooperated with American counterparts. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images “Club de Berne is an information sharing architecture a bit like Europol. It’s designed to share a certain kind of information for a particular function,” said Philip Davies, director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies in London. “But it’s fairly bounded and the information that’s being shared is potentially quite anodyne because you’re not plugging into secure systems and [there are] national caveats.” Major European Union intelligence players — France, the Netherlands, Germany, and until 2019, the U.K. — saw little value in sharing sensitive information with all EU countries, fearing it could fall into the wrong hands. Eastern European services, like Bulgaria’s, were believed to be filled with Russian moles, said Missiroli. One Bulgarian security official argued that was no longer the case, with the old guard largely retired. But while it offered some mode of collaboration, the Club de Berne also left Brussels’ EU-level officials largely in the dark. “The problem with talking about European intelligence sharing is that European intelligence sharing is not the same thing as EU intelligence sharing,” said Davies. CALLING ON THE EU Recent geopolitical shifts have forced the European Union to rethink its approach. Former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö called last year for the EU to create a CIA-style agency, coordinated from Brussels, in a landmark preparedness report at the request of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Niinistö laid out the idea of a “fully fledged intelligence cooperation service at the EU level that can serve both the strategic and operational needs,” while adding that “an anti-sabotage network” is needed to protect infrastructure. If there is such a thing as a collective EU intelligence agency, the European Union’s in-house Intelligence and Situation Centre (INTCEN) at the European External Action Service (EEAS) is the closest to it. The center conducts analysis based on the voluntary contributions by EU countries. Spies from national agencies do secondments at the center, which helps building up ties with national intelligence. Croatian intelligence chief Daniel Markić took over the helm of INTCEN in September 2024 on a mission to beef up information-sharing with the agency and get direct intelligence to EU leaders like von der Leyen and foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. Together with its military counterpart — the EU Military Staff Intelligence Directorate — the two services form the Single Intelligence Analysis Capacity (SIAC), which produces shared intelligence assessments for EU decision-makers. In April, SIAC held its annual meeting in Brussels, this time drawing top officials of the European agencies to attend, along with Kallas.  Spy chiefs at that meeting underlined a growing push for Europe to build its own independent intelligence capabilities. But some also worried that overemphasizing the need for autonomy could further weaken ties with the U.S., creating the very gaps Europe is trying to avoid. TRUST ISSUES Slowly but surely, Brussels is building up its own intelligence community. For instance, intelligence liaison officers now exist in most permanent representations of EU member countries in Brussels. The Belgian Security Services (VSSE), which are officially tasked with overseeing spying activities around the EU institutions in Brussels, have also briefed members of the European Parliament on tactics used to coerce lawmakers into foreign espionage. Still, one European intelligence source told POLITICO that while cooperation between EU countries was now “at its best in modern history,” agencies still work first and foremost for their own national governments. That is a key stumbling block. According to Robert Gorelick, the retired head of mission of the U.S. CIA in Italy, “The reason that an EU-wide intelligence service couldn’t exist is that there is too much variety in how national agencies work.” What’s worse, he added: “There are too many countries — 27 — for there to be such trust in sharing.” Some countries have leaned toward setting up smaller ad hoc groups. After the U.S. paused its intelligence sharing with Ukraine in March, a Coalition of the Willing led by France and the United Kingdom met in Paris and agreed to expand Kyiv’s access to European-operated intelligence, surveillance technology and satellite data. The Netherlands is looking at beefing up cooperation with other European services, like the United Kingdom, Poland, France, Germany and the Nordics — including sharing raw data. “That has been scaled up enormously,” Erik Akerboom, the head of the Dutch civil intelligence service, told De Volkskrant. Yet there is still a long way to go to build enough trust between 27 EU members with differing national priorities. In October, it was revealed that Hungarian intelligence officials disguised as diplomats tried to infiltrate EU institutions while Olivér Várhelyi (now a European commissioner) was Hungary’s ambassador to the bloc, and place Orbán cronies in key positions. Niinistö, who wrote the EU’s preparedness report last year, told POLITICO in an interview this month that a full-fledged EU intelligence agency was still “a question of the future.” He added: “It comes to the word trust when we talk about preparedness, because without trusting we can’t cooperate very much.”

A Belgian security service officer was arrested and indicted for espionage, two people with knowledge of the case told POLITICO. He was taken into custody on Thursday and his home searched the same day. An investigating judge later released him under strict conditions. The charges relate to spying for China, one of the people said, adding that the man, whose precise role within Belgium’s national security apparatus has not been disclosed, was recruited for his access to Brussels’ international diplomatic circles. Brussels is home to many EU institutions, NATO headquarters, some 100 international organizations and 300 foreign diplomatic missions. The arrest comes amid mounting pressure on Belgium’s security agencies. In February, Belgian publication Le Soir revealed that Chinese hackers had infiltrated state security systems between 2021 and 2023, in what is considered the agency’s largest-ever data breach.

BRUSSELS — Crafty hacking groups backed by hostile states have increasingly targeted European public institutions with cyber espionage campaigns in the past year, the European Union’s cybersecurity agency said Wednesday. Public institutions were the most targeted type of organization, accounting for 38 percent of the nearly 5,000 incidents analyzed, the ENISA agency said in its yearly threat landscape report on European cyber threats. The EU itself is a regular target, it added. State-aligned hacking groups “steadily intensified their operations toward EU organizations,” ENISA said, adding that those groups carried out cyber espionage campaigns on public bodies while also attempting to sway the public through disinformation and interference.  The report looked at incidents from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. Multiple European countries said in August that they had been affected by “Salt Typhoon,” a sprawling hacking and espionage campaign believed to be run by China’s Ministry of State Security. In May, the Netherlands also attributed a cyber espionage campaign to Russia, and the Czech government condemned China for carrying out a cyberattack against its foreign ministry exposing thousands of unclassified emails. These incidents underlined how European governments and organizations are increasingly plagued by cyber intrusions and disruption. Though state-backed cyber espionage is on the rise, ENISA said the most “impactful” threat in the EU is ransomware, a type of hack where criminals infiltrate a system, shut it down and demand payment to allow victims to regain control over their IT. Another type of attack, known as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), was the most common type of incident, ENISA said. DDoS attacks are most commonly deployed by cyber activists. ENISA said different types of hacking groups are increasingly using each others’ tactics, most notably when state-aligned groups use cyber-activist techniques to hide their provenance. The agency also highlighted the threat to supply chains posed by cyberattacks, saying the interconnected nature of modern services can amplify the effect of a cyberattack.   Passengers at Brussels, Berlin and London Heathrow airports recently experienced severe delays due to a cyberattack on supplier Collins Aerospace, which provides check-in and boarding systems. “Everyone needs to take his or her responsibilities seriously,” Hans de Vries, the agency’s chief operations officer, told POLITICO. “Any company could have a ripple effect … We are so dependent on IT. That’s not a nice story but it’s the truth.”

BRUSSELS — The president of the European Commission auto-deletes messages from her phone in part to save storage space, the EU executive said this week. Tech experts have but one question: Really? Deleting messages to save space “sounds cute but also hard to believe. Let’s not be silly here, it’s not the 1990s,” said Lukasz Olejnik, senior research fellow at King’s College London and a cybersecurity expert. “A text message barely takes any room on a modern phone. Like, you would need to get hundreds of thousands of text messages for it to actually make a difference,” Belgian ethical hacker Inti De Ceukelaire said, calling the Commission’s explanation “a non-argument.” “Why doesn’t she change to a phone with more storage?” asked Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at technology market research firm IDC in Europe. Ursula von der Leyen is in the hot seat over a text message she received from French President Emmanuel Macron last year urging her to block the EU-Mercosur trade deal, as first reported by POLITICO. The message was subsequently deleted from von der Leyen’s phone, the Commission said in response to an access to documents request filed by Follow the Money reporter Alexander Fanta. The Commission told its staff in 2020 to start using Signal, an end-to-end-encrypted messaging app, in a push to increase the security of its communications. | Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images On Wednesday Commission spokesperson Olof Gill told reporters: “The messages are auto-deleted after a while, just for space reasons.” He jokingly added: “Otherwise, the phone would go on fire.” Another spokesperson, Balazs Ujvari, added it also helped prevent security breaches, but doubled down on the idea that it was a means of saving space: “On the one hand, it reduces the risk of leaks and security breaches, which is of course an important factor … And also, it’s a question of space on the phone, so, effective use of a mobile device.” To be sure, many Europeans have struggled with overloaded phone storage. But for most it’s a matter of home videos and reams of family pictures that are clogging devices. “Messages take up a lot of space if we are talking about videos, voice recordings,” IDC’s Jeronimo said, whereas text-based messages “take nearly nothing from the storage.” The Commission told its staff in 2020 to start using Signal, an end-to-end-encrypted messaging app, in a push to increase the security of its communications. The institution recommended using the app’s disappearing messages functionality in a 2022 guidance called “Checklist to Make Your Signal Safer.” For security purposes it makes sense, Jeronimo said. “If someone like [von der Leyen] loses her phone, or if the phone is hacked … there’s a very high risk” that her communications will be compromised. But the Macron text again trains the spotlight on the EU executive’s policies regarding keeping a public record of its leader’s communications, following a scandal dubbed “Pfizergate” in which von der Leyen’s text exchanges with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla over Covid vaccine contracts were never archived. The European Ombudsman continues to investigate Pfizergate, and this week announced it had opened an investigation into last year’s text from Macron. According to Olejnik, “the truth is that [auto-deleting messages] is great for security, not so [much] for public transparency or accountability.” Gerardo Fortuna contributed reporting.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday called for stronger intelligence services that reflect Germany’s size and economic muscle at a time of heightened threats to Europe. “Rarely in the history of the Federal Republic has the security situation been so serious. The foundations of the European security architecture, which have enabled us to live in freedom, peace, and prosperity for decades, have become fragile,” Merz said at the inauguration of Martin Jäger as the new president of Germany’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the BND. “Given the responsibility we bear in Europe in view of our size and economic strength, it is therefore our goal to ensure that the BND performs at the very highest level in terms of intelligence,” he added. Germany’s security agencies have long depended on U.S. intelligence help to track terrorist threats, cyberattacks and espionage activities, while Europe now confronts a belligerent Russia and its allies. Jäger, 61, was appointed on Sept. 4 replacing long-serving chief Bruno Kahl. A seasoned diplomat, he previously represented Germany in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most recently served as ambassador to Ukraine. Since taking office months ago, Merz himself has become a primary target for Russian disinformation networks. Experts and intelligence officials link the campaigns, including fabricated stories, fake websites and AI-generated videos, to his outspoken support for Kyiv as it resists the Kremlin’s aggression. “In Germany, we are now fending off hybrid attacks against our infrastructure on a daily basis; acts of sabotage, espionage, disinformation campaigns,” Merz said during his speech on Thursday. He warned of “systemic rivals and adversaries” becoming “increasingly aggressive” in their tactics. “A paradigm shift in foreign and security policy” is necessary to overcome such threats, Merz said. “We have very, very good security agencies in Germany. But our sovereignty in Germany and in Europe depends not least on us becoming even better.”