At the moment, neither the NSA nor the Danish Military Intelligence Service are commenting on the spying story
According to TASS, French Foreign Ministry Secretary of State Clément Bohn said on Monday on France Info radio that the spying on European officials by US services backed by Denmark was an “extremely serious” misdemeanour, if indeed it was carried out.
“It is very serious. We must check these facts and condemn them if it turns out to be true”, – Bohn said.
For their part, the Swedish and Norwegian governments demanded an explanation from Denmark over information released on Sunday that Danish intelligence agencies helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) spy on politicians in the northern kingdoms in 2013.
“We demand full information on issues concerning Swedish citizens, companies and interests. And we need to see a response from politicians in Denmark”, – TV2 quoted Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist as saying.
Hultqvist discussed the issue with his Norwegian counterpart Frank Bakke-Jensen.
“We take accusations of espionage seriously”, – the latter noted.
On Sunday, a number of media outlets in Germany, Denmark and Sweden reported that Danish intelligence agencies had helped the NSA spy on European politicians. The scandal began back in 2013 when the weekly Spiegel made public the revelations of former CIA employee Edward Snowden. Since then, the story has grown increasingly detailed – it emerged that US intelligence had been spying on thousands of targets in Europe for years, bugged citizens of Germany and even connected to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone several times.