BRUSSELS - Mounting ire over alleged US snooping will test Europe’s ties with its main ally at a summit Thursday after German and French leaders Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande bluntly demanded Washington provide an explanation.
Initially expected to be “a routine affair”, according to a senior diplomat, the two-day talks from 1500 GMT between the European Union’s 28 heads of state and government have been hijacked by the escalating row over covert US surveillance of its allies.
Germany summoned the US ambassador Thursday amid outrage over suspicion that Washington tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, as she faced allegations she had naively played down the NSA spying scandal.
Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle demanded after a brief meeting at his office with US envoy John B. Emerson that Washington provide straight answers on the allegations immediately, saying the health of the relationship was at stake.
“For us, spying on close friends and partners is totally unacceptable. This undermines trust and this can harm our friendship,” he told reporters in German then in English.
“We need the truth now.”
The ministry could not confirm that the summons was unprecedented in US-German post-war relations but it was seen as a highly unusual move between the close allies.
Earlier Merkel, heading into a European Union summit in Brussels where the growing spy scandal has hijacked the agenda, had expressed her anger over the latest reports. “Spying between friends, that’s just not done,” Merkel said.
Merkel on the eve of the summit called President Barack Obama demanding answers, warning that proof of snooping on her phone would be considered a “breach of trust”.
It was Obama’s second such embarrassing call this week after Hollande too picked up his phone to demand an explanation over reports of US spying on millions of phone calls in France.
Washington also denied reports of eavesdropping on France.
In the wake of Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s activities, several important allies have complained about US covert surveillance and the White House is struggling to stem the diplomatic damage.
The NSA affair has also seen claims of US snooping on foreign leaders in Mexico and Brazil, whose President Dilma Rousseff last month cancelled a state visit to Washington over the scandal.
In Germany, the head of the SPD party, Sigmar Gabriel - currently in talks with Merkel to form a coalition government - said the snooping threatened talks to seal a trans-Atlantic trade deal seen as the biggest in history.
Whether EU leaders will come up with a common stand in response is less than certain.
Many, notably Britain with its close intelligence links to the US, and Spain, see spying as a matter of national interest firmly outside the bloc’s remit.
Many also spy on each other, with Britain and the US spying on Italy to glean data on underwater fibre-optic cables with the consent of its own secret services, according to Italian weekly L’Espresso.
“I don’t imagine the (EU) Council getting into a discussion on national security,” said an EU diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Espionage is not an EU matter, it’s an issue of national sovereignty,” said another diplomat.
But as anger boiled up in Europe, Commission head Barroso said “We in Europe consider the right to privacy as a fundamental right.”
Referring to life in Communist-era East Germany, where Merkel grew up, he warned that not so long ago “there was a part of Germany where political police were spying on people’s lives daily.
“We know very recently what totalitarianism means,” he said.
“We know what happens when a state uses powers that intrude on peoples lives.”
At the summit, officially themed around boosting employment and the digital economy, leaders will also tackle a complex immigration crisis highlighted by this month’s deaths of hundreds of refugees desperate to reach Europe’s shores.
The two shipwrecks, in which more than 400 refugees from Africa and the Middle East drowned off the Italian island of Lampedusa, triggered a barrage of calls for action to prevent the Mediterranean Sea from turning into what French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called an “open-air cemetery”.
Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta is urging European leaders to bolster the EU’s Frontex border agency and bring forward Eurosur, a planned satellite-and-drone surveillance programme to detect migrant ships in trouble.