The EU is planning to pull together three intelligence-sharing bureaus based in Brussels to form a new department in the bloc’s External Action Service (EAS).

The EU’s foreign relations chief, Catherine Ashton, is currently drafting a proposal for the future structure of the union’s diplomatic corps, with a final paper expected in March.

But sources in the EU institutions say she aims to merge into one new department the EU Council’s Joint Situation Centre, its Watch-Keeping Capability and the European Commission’s Crisis Room to help guide EAS decisions on security matters.

The Joint Situation Centre, known as SitCen, today has 110 staff and is located on Avenue de Cortenbergh, in the heart of the EU quarter.

It contains a cell of secret service agents seconded from EU capitals. The cell, headed up by a French agent, pools classified information sent in by member states and drafts occasional four-to-10-page-long reports on topics ranging from terrorism to, for example, Iran’s diplomatic contacts with neighbouring countries.

SitCen also runs a round-the-clock alert desk which uses open sources, such as BBC Monitoring or photos taken by commercial satellites, and sends emails and SMSes to selected EU diplomats two or three times a day.

The Watch-Keeping Capability is in the same building. Its team, made up of 12 people from EU states’ police and armed forces, pulls in news from the EU’s 23 police and military missions, such as the EUMM in Georgia.