Germany and the UK are in the midst of a quarrel over spying.
With the publication of the leaked Snowden documents last year, which suggested that the UK and the US had been spying on Germany, the German parliament set up a parliamentary enquiry.
Germans learned that the US National Security Agency had been eavesdropping on Angela Merkel’s phone calls.
British intelligence officials have been spooked by the prospect of an enquiry, fearing that classified information about joint projects could be compromised. Concern in particular centres round a surveillance project covering Europe which started last year.
The Brits have threatened to stop sharing information with their German counterparts if the enquiry goes ahead, according to a report in Focus magazine.
The UK shares a good amount of information with Germany
Germany obtains a lot of shared information from the UK. “Without the information from British signals intelligence we would be blind," an unnamed senior intelligence official told the magazine.
Spats have broken out before. Last summer a double agent was uncovered in the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) who had been selling information to the CIA. This resulted in the CIA’s Berlin station chief being asked to leave the country.
The UK was also revealed to have been monitoring government department communications from its embassy.
