Last week, L'Express published a so‑called ranking of intelligence services.

The top five are the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Ukraine and Germany.

Estonia is in eighth place, Lithuania 18th and Latvia 21st. Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia received zero points and were left out of the table entirely.

Points were awarded as follows: each member of the 60‑person jury selected five top intelligence services, which received points from one to five according to their ranking. The evaluators were former or current intelligence officials from 25 countries.

Estonian security expert Meelis Oidsalu noted that forming a ranking in this way can introduce distortions.

"Never before have intelligence professionals themselves — albeit subjectively, but still giving numerical scores — evaluated each other's work. There is certainly news value here, but the sample of 60 respondents is small enough that random distortions can slip in," Oidsalu said.

He stressed that this is a reputation survey measuring how European intelligence colleagues assess one another. "Their view matters, because they essentially know more or less what kind of information is valuable in intelligence terms," Oidsalu said.

However, the ranking lacks the assessments of intelligence services' clients — governments and armed forces.

"Some things that may seem impressive or complex to intelligence officers themselves may not have much value for the intelligence client. That perspective should have been included. Overall, I think this study still adds something to transparency in the security field," Oidsalu said.

At the top of the table were the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands.

According to Oidsalu, such a ranking reflects intelligence funding.

"The British intelligence system is very well funded. Their intelligence community's budget is around five billion euros per financial year. The Baltic states have to manage with a few tens of millions per agency. From that perspective, money simply provides greater capabilities," Oidsalu said.

Estonia received a total of 27 points from intelligence experts, earning eighth place.

The study highly values Estonia's cyber capabilities and intelligence based on open data. It also praises the Foreign Intelligence Service's annual assessments of Russia.

According to Oidsalu, Estonian intelligence has a very good reputation.

"It is not always justified, but it is certainly an asset for Estonia. I think the problem for all Baltic intelligence services, when we talk about foreign intelligence, is how much they can actually collect information themselves. Estonia's analytical capability is valued. But the question is that after the start of the war in Ukraine, a whole wave of think tanks has entered the market. These think tanks existed before, but they have begun collecting open‑source intelligence themselves, because commercial satellite intelligence has developed," Oidsalu said.

He noted that the analytical function traditionally performed by foreign intelligence in the Baltic states no longer provides as much added value. "We increasingly need to think about how to collect information and how to raise analysis to a new level within the possibilities of artificial intelligence. These things definitely need critical review in Estonia as well."

Oidsalu pointed out that the Estonian Internal Security Service (ISS) was unfairly left out of the study. "In my view, Estonia's counterintelligence is stronger than its foreign intelligence. Our so‑called hit rate in catching traitors and saboteurs is the best in Europe — the statistics are the best in Europe," he emphasized.

Oidsalu also noticed that Germany's foreign intelligence service BND is ranked fifth, even though in his view it is a very ineffective agency.

"There is no funding problem — last year's budget was over one billion euros — but L'Express also pointed out that only two percent of terrorism warnings come from German intelligence itself. Most are provided by the CIA to the German government. The efficiency problem is very serious, and for a long time they refused to conduct foreign operations at all," Oidsalu said.

In his view, BND's high ranking shows a lack of adequacy. Before Russia's full‑scale invasion of Ukraine, German intelligence assessed that there would be no war. "Just like French and Dutch intelligence, they insisted firmly that their sources in Moscow said there would be no war. So someone in Moscow played a double game with them and fooled them," he said.

Although Latvia is at the bottom of the table, Oidsalu stressed that the southern neighbor should not be mocked.

"Latvia still received one point, unlike Bulgaria, Hungary or Slovakia. The logic of the scoring means that one of the evaluators placed Latvia in the top five in Europe, which is not actually a bad result. The methodology itself distorts the picture somewhat, so we have no reason to look down on Latvia," he said.

Regarding Ukraine, which is ranked fourth, the newspaper writes that the country's intelligence is influenced primarily by the CIA and the KGB — the CIA has supported Ukraine since 2014, and Ukraine's intelligence service is said to have inherited certain mentality from the KGB.

"There is certainly room for development, because Ukraine's military intelligence — like its military — is still haunted on one hand by the Soviet legacy and the fact that many people received their military training in the Soviet or Russian system," Oidsalu said.

However, colleagues value Ukraine's "Mossad‑like" development — a reference to Israel's intelligence service Mossad — meaning its ability to carry out effective special operations. For example, in 2024 Israel's intelligence service detonated the pagers of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Oidsalu considers such intelligence development in Ukraine surprising.

"We do not consider this part of the traditional Western intelligence tradition. At the same time, in wartime the Baltic states and NATO must also be ready for such precision special operations against the aggressor in its own rear. Intelligence‑gathered information and intercepted enemy communications play a very large role there," he added.

Oidsalu explained that intelligence is not traditionally meant to directly destroy the enemy; rather, it must provide targets and prepare ways to strike the enemy's command system and most sensitive points.

"The main task of intelligence is to identify those sensitive points where the impact would be disproportionately large. Intelligence itself does not have to neutralize enemies," he said.

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