Key Takeaway
Britain’s spooks take quiet satisfaction from survey ranking Secret Intelligence Service Europe’s top espionage agency MI6 has the swagger of James Bond; its French equivalent, DGSE, the complexities of the television drama Le Bureau. The film and TV shows may be fictional, but a survey run by a French magazine that placed the British spy agency above the French as…
Published August 8, 2026 · Category: News
Overview
Britain’s spooks take quiet satisfaction from survey ranking Secret Intelligence Service Europe’s top espionage agency
MI6 has the swagger of James Bond; its French equivalent, DGSE, the complexities of the television drama Le Bureau. The film and TV shows may be fictional, but a survey run by a French magazine that placed the British spy agency above the French as No 1 across all of Europe this week is not.
Details
L’Express, a news weekly, conducted a Eurovision-style poll of 60 current and former spies from across the continent, plus the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Each was asked to rank their top five foreign intelligence agencies, in secret, naturally enough. MI6 was first with 251 points ahead of DGSE on 169, with other agencies trailing behind.
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Source
Originally published at www.theguardian.com.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Bond effect? How MI6 fascinates spy watchers around the world" about?+
Britain’s spooks take quiet satisfaction from survey ranking Secret Intelligence Service Europe’s top espionage agency MI6 has the swagger of James Bond; its French equivalent, DGSE, the complexities of the television drama Le Bureau. The film and TV shows may be fictional, but a survey run by a French magazine that placed the British spy agency above the French as No 1 across all of Europe this week is not.L’Express, a news weekly, conducted a Eurovision-style poll of 60 current and former spie
Who reported this story?+
This story was reported by The Guardian World.