The real problem ist that all EU countries and the US do the same. They’re all limited to spy on their own population by their constitutions, thus their solution is: “You’ll spy on mine and report to me, i’ll spy on yours and will report to you.”
It should be a no go to spy on people in the free world on each side of the pond. Therefore it should be a no go to help other countries to spy on their own population like the US and all EU countries do.
That’s quite a presumption to call the European Union “the free world”.
It is true that the EU countries and the US do the same. Anyway the real problem are not the pis*ed off politicians like Merkel, the real problem is the decline of Americas reputation in continental Europe. The result is a distorted image of the US. To European kids America is not better than China or Russia in example although such is ridicolous of course. This will be extremely dangerous in the long run. The next generation of politicians in Poland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Lettland, Lativa, Estland, Luxemburg, Greece, Norway, Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary or France might be not as cool and controlled als Merkel is in this question. This is even worse since the economical importance of the US is also declining quite fast since the past 20 years. We could do without you guys if we would really like to. But this leads to nothing good. Therefore: If we want to keep the trans-atlantic relationsship we all have to do something for it. It could be a good beginning, if you Americans would stop spying on our industry i.e. and sign a no-spy-convention. We all know that not the “terrorists” are the most important target of the NSA, but European companys that are more competitive than their competitors in the US.