From Andrew Rettman, the EUobserver:  Eight candidates have declared an interest in becoming the permanent head of the EU’s most sensitive security organ, the Joint Situation Centre (SitCen).

French diplomat Patrice Bergamini, who was recently appointed as SitCen caretaker manager by EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton, is in a strong position to lobby for the €15,000-a-month permanent post, advertised by Ms Ashton earlier this month. …

The director of Austria’s Federal Agency for State Protection and Counter Terrorism, Peter Gridling, is also in the running, EUobserver has learned. British, German and Italian candidates from diplomatic and security backgrounds have come forward as well. …

SitCen will from 1 December become part of the European External Action Service (EEAS) under Ms Ashton’s command. …

An organigram circulating in the EU institutions indicates that SitCen’s existing unit of 15 analysts is to be joined by six staff from the European Commission’s Crisis Room. The move is designed to combine SitCen’s human resources – its open source analysts between them speak Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and Russian – and the Crisis Room’s IT expertise.

SitCen’s information security branch is to be merged with its European Commission counterpart and split off to become a separate EEAS department. SitCen currently operates the so-called Coreu system used by member states to circulate non-public EU documents, while the commission’s New Communications Network handles its links with EU delegations abroad.

Ms Asthon’s intelligence hub will also use more images from EU government-owned satellites, namely France’s Helios and Pleiades systems, Germany’s SAR-Lupe and Italy’s Cosmo-SkyMed, on top of existing data from US-owned commercial satellites.  (photo: EU Commission)