EU fury over US phone-tap claims

European leaders united in anger at a summit overshadowed by reports of widespread US spying on its allies, which German chancellor Angela Merkel said had shattered trust in the Obama administration and undermined the crucial transatlantic relationship.

The latest revelations that the US National Security Agency swept up more than 70 million phone records in France and may have tapped Mrs Merkel’s own mobile phone brought condemnation from the French and German governments.

Mrs Merkel’s unusually stern remarks as she arrived at the European Union gathering in Brussels indicated she was not placated by a phone conversation she had on Wednesday with President Barack Obama, or his personal assurances that the US was not listening in on her calls now.

“We need trust among allies and partners,” she told reporters. “Such trust now has to be built anew. This is what we have to think about.”

“The United States of America and Europe face common challenges. We are allies. But such an alliance can only be built on trust. That’s why I repeat again: spying among friends, that cannot be.”

The White House may soon face the wrath of other irked heads of state and government after The Guardian said it obtained a confidential memo suggesting the National Surveillance Agency was able to monitor 35 world leaders’ communications in 2006.

The memo said the NSA encouraged senior officials at the White House, Pentagon and other agencies to share their contacts so the spy agency could add foreign leaders’ phone numbers to its surveillance systems, the report said.

The Guardian did not identify who was reportedly bugged, but said the memo termed the pay-off very meagre. “Little reportable intelligence” was obtained, it said.

Other European leaders arriving for the 28-nation meeting echoed Mrs Merkel’s displeasure. Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt called it “completely unacceptable” for a country to eavesdrop on an allied leader.

If reports that Mrs Merkel’s phone had been tapped were true, “it is exceptionally serious,” Dutch premier Mark Rutte said.

“We want the truth,” Italian prime minister Enrico Letta said. “It is not in the least bit conceivable that activity of this type could be acceptable.”

Austria’s foreign minister Michael Spindelegger said, “We need to re-establish with the US a relationship of trust, which has certainly suffered from this.”

France, which also vocally objected to allies spying on each other, asked that the issue of reinforcing Europeans’ privacy in the digital age be added to the agenda of the two-day summit.

Before official proceedings got under way, Mrs Merkel held a brief one-to-one meeting with French president Francois Hollande and discussed the spying controversy.

After summit talks that lasted until early today, Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president, announced at a news conference that France and Germany were seeking bilateral talks with the United States to resolve the dispute over electronic spying by “secret services” by the end of this year.

“What is at stake is preserving our relations with the United States,” Mr Hollande said at his own early-morning news conference. “They should not be changed because of what has happened. But trust has to be restored and reinforced.”

“It’s become clear that for the future, something must change – and significantly,” Mrs Merkel said. “We will put all efforts into forging a joint understanding by the end of the year for the co-operation of the (intelligence) agencies between Germany and the US and France and the US, to create a framework for the co-operation.”

The leaders’ statements and actions indicated that they had not been satisfied with assurances from Washington. On Wednesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Mr Obama personally assured Mrs Merkel that her phone was not being listened to now and would not be in the future.

Asked whether the Americans had monitored Mrs Merkel’s previous communications, Mr Carney did not rule it out. “We are not going to comment publicly on every specified alleged intelligence activity,” he said.

But while the White House was staying publicly silent, Mr Carney said the Obama administration was discussing Germany’s concerns “through diplomatic channels at the highest level”, as it was with other US allies worried about the alleged spying.

In the past, much of the official outrage in Europe about revelations of U.S. communications intercepts leaked by former NSA contract worker Edward Snowden seemed designed for internal political consumption in countries that readily acknowledge conducting major spying operations themselves.

But there has been a new discernible vein of anger in Europe as the scale of the NSA’s reported operations became known, as well as the possible targeting of a prominent leader like Mrs Merkel, presumably for inside political or economic information.

European Union Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said for many Europeans, eavesdropping on their phone calls or reading their emails was particularly objectionable because it raised the spectre of totalitarian regimes of the recent past.

“At least in Europe, we consider the right to privacy a fundamental right and it is a very serious matter. We cannot, let’s say, pretend it is just something accessory,” Mr Barroso told a pre-summit news conference.

Referring to the East German communist secret police, the feared Stasi, he said: “There was a part of Germany where there was a political police that was spying on people’s lives every day. So we know very recently what totalitarianism means.

“And we know very well what comes, what happens when the state uses powers that intrude in people’s lives. So it is a very important issue, not only for Germany but for Europe in general.”

In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry summoned the US ambassador to stress how seriously it took the reported spying on Mrs Merkel.

Germany’s defence minister Thomas de Maiziere said: “The Americans are and remain our best friends, but this is absolutely not right.

“I have reckoned for years with my cell phone being monitored, but I wasn’t reckoning with the Americans.”

In an editorial published on the USA Today website, President Obama's adviser for homeland security and counter-terrorism Lisa Monaco said the US government was not operating ``unrestrained''.

The US intelligence community had more restrictions and oversight than any other country, she wrote, saying: “We are not listening to every phone call or reading every email. Far from it.”

Ms Monaco noted that a privacy and civil liberties oversight board was reviewing anti-terror efforts to ensure privacy and civil liberties were protected.

“Going forward, we will continue to gather the information we need to keep ourselves and our allies safe, while giving even greater focus to ensuring that we are balancing our security needs with the privacy concerns all people share,” she wrote.