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Germany and France Propose Talks With U.S. to Rein In Spying Germany and France Propose Talks With U.S. to Rein In Spying
(about 5 hours later)
BRUSSELS — The leaders of Germany and France offered on Friday to hold talks with the United States in an effort to come up with mutually acceptable rules for surveillance operations, easing a trans-Atlantic spying dispute that has plunged relations between America and Europe to a low point. BERLIN — While President Obama has tried to soften the blow, this week’s disclosures about the extent of America’s spying on its European allies have added to a series of issues that have sharply eroded confidence in United States leadership at a particularly difficult moment.
A day earlier, fury over reports that American intelligence agents had monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany spread to other European leaders and prompted calls to suspend trade talks with the United States. The sharp words from Germany, France and others this week are part of a broader set of frustrations over issues like the Syrian civil war, the danger posed to the global economy by Washington’s fiscal fights and the broader perception that the president himself — for all his promises to rebuild relations with allies following the Bush presidency — is an unreliable partner.
But in a remarkable attack on both Edward J. Snowden, the former American intelligence contractor, and news organizations that have printed classified material he has provided, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain accused them of “helping our enemies” and endangering lives. Mr. Snowden and the newspapers are “signaling to people who mean to do us harm how to evade and avoid intelligence and surveillance and other techniques,” Mr. Cameron said at a news conference in Brussels on Friday. This American administration is “misreading and miscalculating the effects” of its deeds in a Europe that is less ready than it once was to heed the United States, said Annette Heuser, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a research organization in Washington.
While Mr. Cameron said he supported Ms. Merkel and President François Hollande of France in seeking talks with Washington about new rules governing electronic surveillance, he delivered his strongest denunciation so far of those involved in publishing leaked material. Early on Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Franςois Hollande of France emerged from a meeting of European leaders to call for talks with the United States on new rules for their intelligence relationship. A statement from the European leaders said a “lack of trust” could undermine trans-Atlantic intelligence cooperation.
“That is not going to make our world safer, it’s going to make our world more dangerous,” he said. “That is helping our enemies.” He was speaking after a summit meeting of European leaders that was eclipsed by concern about the extent of American electronic eavesdropping on its allies. Earlier in the week the European Parliament had acted to suspend an agreement with the United States that allows it to track the finances of terrorist groups, citing suspicions that the United States authorities were tapping European citizens’ personal financial data.
Those worries could intensify with the publication in The Guardian on Friday of a report that as long ago as October 2006, the National Security Agency, the American agency Mr. Snowden once worked for, had monitored the telephone conversations of 35 world leaders. The assertion emerged in what the newspaper described as a classified document he had leaked. The disclosures contained in the documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have crystallized a growing sense in Europe that post-9/11 America has lost some of the values of privacy and accountability that have been the source of the world’s admiration for its version of democracy.
The article did not identify the leaders but said their phone numbers had been provided by other American officials in response to a request from the N.S.A. to share their contacts with intelligence gatherers. So fierce was the anger in Berlin over suspicions that American intelligence had tapped into Mrs. Merkel’s cellphone that Elmar Brok of Germany, the chairman of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a pillar of trans-Atlantic exchanges since 1984, spoke Friday of America’s security establishment as a creepy “state within a state.”
In Brussels, Mr. Cameron deflected questions about any role played by Britain’s intelligence agencies, beyond saying that they shared information with European allies and were subject to oversight. Since Sept. 11, 2001, he said, “the balance between freedom and security has been lost.”
But he dwelled at length on the behavior of Mr. Snowden and newspapers publishing material provided by him. In the past, Mr. Cameron has singled out The Guardian, accusing it of endangering national security. To be sure, the United States and Europe are like a bickering couple that will never break up. For all the sharp words, they cannot even begin to contemplate an actual divorce. Many of the European complaints about the United States also seem directed mainly at a domestic audience, and may not result in concrete changes to a relationship that has weathered many storms.
“The first priority of a prime minister is to help try and keep your country safe,” he said. Referring dismissively to his adversaries in the debate over the balance between privacy and national security, he continued: “That means not having some la-di-da, airy-fairy view about what this all means. It’s understanding intelligence and security services do an important job.” But the United States under Mr. Obama had lost a considerable amount of European patience and good will even before the latest round of disclosures from the leaked N.S.A. documents.
“Yes they need to be governed under law, yes they must be scrutinized by Parliament, but we need those people,” he said. “I’ve lost count of the plots that I have seen and the problems that I have seen being avoided by the work they do.” First came the diplomatic shambles over Syria, where, in late summer, the United States seemed poised for military action following the killing of hundreds by chemical weapons. France keenly backed America, as did Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron. But Mr. Cameron unexpectedly failed to get support from his Parliament, Mr. Obama wavered, Russia stepped into the breach with a last-minute diplomatic solution that left Germany and other nations diplomatically bruised, and France was left hanging out to dry.
Earlier, seeking to rebuild trust between Europeans and the United States, Ms. Merkel said at an early morning news conference in Brussels that a pact should be agreed to by the end of the year that ends the kind of surveillance that was made public by Mr. Snowden. Barely had the trans-Atlantic partners gotten over that discomfort than the divisive partisan politics of Washington precipitated a government shutdown and brought the United States — and thus Europe and the world — to the brink of default and economic turmoil.
The aim is to “come to a common understanding of the services between the United States and Germany and France so that we put down a framework for cooperation,” Ms. Merkel said after European Union leaders ended a first day of talks. This week, two American ambassadors, Charles H. Rivkin in France and John B. Emerson in Germany, were summoned to the Foreign Ministries in Paris and Berlin for a dressing down by two of America’s closest friends. The depressing spectacle reversed the traditional roles played by Europe and America, certainly for Germany. France is a proud nuclear power, and while relations have been exceptionally warm in recent years, it is strongly independent and a frequent critic, particularly of American culture.
In a joint statement, the 28 European Union leaders at the two-day meeting “took note of the intention of France and Germany to seek bilateral talks” with the United States. The leaders also “noted that other E.U. countries are welcome to join this initiative,” which they said “underlined the close relationship between Europe and the U.S.A. and the value of that partnership.” Still, it was unusual to hear the foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, lecture so sternly.
The revelations about the eavesdropping on Ms. Merkel follow reports of extensive American electronic surveillance in France and suggestions that American and British intelligence services monitored and are probably still monitoring Italian telecommunications networks. “This sort of practice between partners that invades privacy is totally unacceptable and we have to make sure, very quickly, that this no longer happens,” he said. “We fully agree that we cooperate to fight terrorism. It is indispensable. But this does not justify that personal data of millions of our compatriots are snooped on.”
But in a further sign of a willingness to defuse the dispute, Ms. Merkel said the leaders meeting in Brussels had not talked about interrupting negotiations with the United States to reach a landmark trade deal aimed at reducing tariffs and aligning regulations. Germany, basically a post-World War II creation of America and its allies, is much less accustomed to such lecturing, with Germans to this day frequently referring to the United States as their country’s school for democracy.
“I always take the view that when you leave the room, you have to always contemplate how to get back in again,” said Ms. Merkel, referring to the importance of keeping the trade talks going. “In such a tense situation, such talks may be even more important than usual.” Now, said Guntram Wulff, director of Breugel, a policy organization in Brussels, “the students are calling the teacher,” reminding the Obama administration of democratic values.
Asked whether she wanted an apology from the United States, Ms. Merkel said, “The most important thing at this juncture is to find a basis for the future” so that “trust can be rebuilt.” But she warned the United States that “words will not be sufficient” to make amends, adding, “It’s become clear for the future that things have to change, and they have to change radically.” That the call came from a German chancellor who was raised in Communist East Germany, and thus has personal familiarity with government spying, heightened the irony and the bitterness.
She also suggested that the door had been left open to a possible suspension of an agreement with the United States that allows it to track the finances of terrorist groups. Lawmakers at the European Parliament voted earlier this week to suspend the agreement because of suspicions that the United States authorities were tapping European citizens’ personal financial data. The Snowden documents have led to calls in a number of European countries, especially Germany, for greater assurance that the digital privacy of their citizens is respected within Europe and beyond.
That agreement is important to Washington because it allows the American authorities to continue having access to European banking data from a cooperative responsible for routing trillions of dollars daily among banks, brokerage houses, stock exchanges and other institutions. The cooperative, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, is based near Brussels. It provided the United States with personal data after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. How much leverage Europeans have in order to achieve that in a borderless Internet world is questionable, although as Ms. Heuser noted, the past week has united them as never before in their calls for privacy and better data protection. Even Mr. Cameron of Britain, whose intelligence services are closely allied with their counterparts in the United States, backed the French and Germans in their quest for American cooperation in setting and sticking to new rules for an era of digital data.
“I have a certain understanding for the position of the European Parliament,” Ms. Merkel said. Approval by the European Union’s member states is required for the resolution to take effect. Yet, even united, the Europeans often feel like bystanders, powerless to stop the dithering or insensitivity of their partner, the world’s No. 1 power. Threats to halt talks on a trans-Atlantic trade deal that would create a free market of about 800 million people in Europe and the United States are empty, since the deal would produce much needed growth and create jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.
Some European Union officials have seized on the latest revelations about United States snooping as a way to give new momentum to a fiercely contested proposal that could require American companies like Google and Yahoo to seek clearance from European officials before complying with United States warrants seeking private data. That mutual dependence has kept the old couple together for decades. But many analysts warn that the younger generation may be far more fickle. The old guard Atlanticists who nurtured modern Germany knew war, or cold war and division. A year of study in America constituted their discovery of the world.
The legislation would also seek to bolster privacy protection in Europe with fines on the biggest technology companies that could run to billions of euros if the companies fail to adhere to rules like those limiting the sharing of personal data. Today’s young Europeans can go anywhere, and glean information from all sorts of sources. A job in Shanghai, Singapore or India is seen as little different from one in Los Angeles or New York, noted Ms. Heuser. Meanwhile, in the United States Congress, there are fewer and fewer young members with foreign experience, something once gained, in many cases by military service.
The proposal has met with fierce opposition from business groups in the United States and Europe. Countries like Britain have pushed strongly to delay any final decision rather than endorse the deadline of spring 2014 called for by European Union officials and lawmakers to adopt the rules. After this week, the older European generation is wondering about the marriage, too. “America has always been about freedom and a guarantor for freedom,” said Mr. Brok, bitterly. “Perhaps we were too naïve.”
The British view appeared to have prevailed by Friday morning. In their statement, the 28 leaders agreed that it was “important to foster the trust of citizens and businesses in the digital economy,” but said adopting the privacy rules by 2015 would be sufficient. He sets off on Sunday on his latest trip to Washington and glimpse of a security machine that he suggested is so drowning in data that it misses valuable clues, like the Russian warning about the Tsarnayev brothers before they bombed the Boston Marathon.
“In China, I expect such behavior,” he noted. But, from America, “this is real disappointment.”

James Kanter reported from Brussels, and Alan Cowell from London.

James Kanter reported from Brussels, and Alan Cowell from London.