If confirmed, the decision to set up a National Security Council within the Presidency itself would constitute a small revolution in the intelligence world. Far from being simply a carbon copy of an existing structure in the United States, this gathering of experts would not be out of place among its European partners. For a long time now, London with its “Permanent Secretary on Intelligence Service”, Berlin with its Secretary of State at the Chancellery, or even Moscow with a Security Council where the real decisions are often made, have established similar entities. The reason for this is simple and it’s surprising that it didn’t resonate more – and earlier – in Paris: confidential documents from all intelligence services, diplomats, and military attaches stationed abroad, not to mention information on technological monitoring and industrial competition, which are presented as decision-making aids to the political authorities, are too numerous and sometimes simply not read! This leads to a tremendous loss of energy and knowledge. Not to mention the dubiously famous episodes where the President’s desk receives, on the same day from different French services, two of the most secret documents providing completely contradictory information on an event of national interest. If, as he is reputed to intend, Nicolas Sarkozy wants to end the “reserved domain”, no doubt the implementation of this unit comprising members from the Quai d’Orsay, the Ministry of Defense, the SGDN (General Secretariat for National Defence), and academics, not forgetting the industrialists to be effective in his job creation battle, will facilitate the flow of information whose possession and segmentation have, until now, unfortunately been associated with strategies of personal power.
However, one question remains: Will this Council have authority over the Services? In other words, will it only evaluate information, or, more ambitively and innovatively, could it also guide, even coordinate, the action of the various intelligence instruments at the state’s service? A point as delicate as it is problematic. The susceptibilities in front of which the power has too often bent, or on the contrary, abusively taken advantage of, to “have several cards in hand”, may no longer be appropriate tomorrow. The logic of efficiency, so dear to the new President, should therefore prevail, in line with the merger already underway between the various domestic services which will be consolidated *ratione loci* if not entirely *ratione materiae*. For the first time, however, the sad “Espionage” à la française would no longer be unjustly devalued compared to its noble British equivalent of “Intelligence”.
