Angela Merkel's government embarrassed by German spying scandal

When allegations emerged in 2013 that the US had been spying on the German chancellor, Angela Merkel's stance was unequivocal. "Spying among friends - that's just not on," she said.

Two years later, it appears that not all of Germany's security apparatus shared that opinion. Over the past few days, reports in the German press have suggested that the German foreign intelligence service (BND) helped the US to spy on various European targets.

Embarrassingly for the German government, the alleged targets included the French presidency, the French foreign ministry and the European Commission.

The private sector may have also been in the crosshairs. The European aerospace and defence group Airbus was sufficiently concerned over reports that it had been a target to file a criminal complaint against unknown persons.

"We are aware that as a major player in this industry we are a target for intelligence activities," the group said in a statement this week.

"In this particular case, there appears to be a reasonable suspicion of alleged industrial espionage. We are alarmed by this.

"We are asking the German prosecutor for a criminal investigation. This is all we can do to protect the company."

Infringement of privacy is a sensitive topic in Germany, given the widespread domestic surveillance programmes carried out both by the Nazis and later by the Communist regime in the former East Germany.

But the latest allegations - which suggest that Germany may have abetted electronic surveillance, as well as being on the receiving end of it - have intensified public interest in the topic, and forced Ms Merkel's government on to the back foot.

On Wednesday, Thomas de Maiziere, the interior minister and a close ally of the chancellor, was forced to deny that he had lied to parliament about intelligence co-operation with US spy agencies.

Meanwhile, the Social Democrats (SPD), who govern Germany together with Ms Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), have been quick to demand explanations from their coalition partner.

"The chancellery's supervision of the BND seems to have failed miserably," Yasmin Fahimi, the SPD's general secretary, told the Passauer Neue Presse. "The chancellery, which has been run for 10 years by the CDU, has the responsibility [to ensure] that the German secret service behaves properly."

Politicians from the Greens and the Left also took aim.

"It is becoming more and more embarrassing for the chancellery, and for the chancellor," said Hans-Christian Strobele, a member of the Green party, according to a report from Deutschlandfunk, the public radio station.

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Such assurances have done little to check public interest in the story. The German government can take some relief in the fact that, so far, international fallout from the affair has been muted.

The French government has said that it is in contact with German authorities, but so far Francois Hollande, the French president, has made no public statement on the matter.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the Brussels commission, also adopted a cautious stance when asked about the allegations.

"That has to be cleared up by the German authorities, including the parliament," he said. Asked whether he shared Ms Merkel's reservations about spying among friends, he answered tersely: "Yes."

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