#Peer Steinbrück

[bauerntanz]

Debatte zur sog. Schuldenbremse nimmt Fahrt auf

Die notwendige Debatte zur sog. #Schuldenbremse nimmt Fahrt auf. Und das ist bitter notwendig. Hier ein Lesebefehl für den @Verfassungsblog

Die Debatte zur sogenannten Schuldenbremse nimmt Fahrt auf, und das ist bitter notwendig. Nicht wenige halten diese euphemistisch formulierte Maßnahme –ich zitiere Marcus Höfgen– für die dümmste aller Regeln, die aber 2009 mit Zweidrittelmehrheit von CDUCSUSPD ins Grundgesetz gegossen wurde. Der damalige SPD-Finanzminister Peer Steinbrück war übrigens damals die treibende Kraft für den Bund,…

[korrektheiten]

Bringt uns Künstliche Intelligenz die nächste wahre “Zeitenwende”?

Ansage: »Seit einer bald zwei Jahre alten Rede von Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz ist die „Zeitenwende“ ein überstrapaziertes Wort. Derzeit ist es wieder einmal in aller Munde. Jedermann bezieht sich auf dieses Scholz-Zitat. Selbst der ehemalige Kanzlerkandidat Peer Steinbrück empfiehlt neu, der Ampel eine Agenda 2030, nachdem die Scholz’sche „Zeitenwende“ nicht richtig vermittelt worden sei. Im Jahre 2022 […] The post Bringt uns Künstliche Intelligenz die nächste wahre “Zeitenwende”? first appeared on Ansage. http://dlvr.it/T0ZXzX «

[derd2000]

Wappen der Stadt Gronau (Westf.) TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT Die Stadt Gronau des Kreise Borken liegt im Bundesland Nordrhein-Westfalen. Das Wappen zeigt im gelben Wappengrund einen blauen Schwan und links daneben im grünen Feld eine Spule.Auf der rechten Seite im Wappen ist eine Ähre abgebildet.Die Symbole und Farben stehen für die beiden früheren Gemeinden Gronau und Epe im Wappenbild.Udo Lindenberg, 1946 in Gronau geboren eröffnete mit Peer Steinbrück 2004 in Gronau das einzigartige Rock `n Popmuseum.Ebenso in Gronau geboren wurde Udo`s Bruder Erich. Die Firma Urenco betreibt in Gronau seit 1985 eine Urananreicherungsanlage. Der Dino -gronausaurus wegneri-der im Jahre 1910 in einer Ziegelgrube im Ort gefunden wurde,war ein 3 Meter langer Vertreter seiner einzigartigen Art und bekam deshalb den Namen vom Fundort Gronau.

[blognachrichten]

Steinbrück gibt der Euro-Zentralbank EZB Mitschuld an hoher Inflation

Die hohe Inflation sei auch Schuld der EZB, meint der frühere Finanzminister Peer Steinbrück von der SPD nun. Die EZB habe seiner Meinung nach zu... The post Steinbrück gibt der Euro-Zentralbank EZB Mitschuld an hoher Inflation appeared first on NEOPresse - Unabhängige Nachrichten. https://bit.ly/3WPIxMB

[3saiwen3]

Danish secret service helped NSA spy on Merkel, EU officials: report

Media investigation claims Denmark cooperated with US spying on European politicians.

Denmark’s secret services helped the U.S. National Security Agency spy on European officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, under the Barack Obama administration, according to reports by multiple European news outlets.

Reports of the NSA spying on U.S. allies first came to light in 2013 through disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden, but the new investigation published Sunday details alleged support from the Defense Intelligence Service (FE) in Denmark, Germany’s northern neighbor.

Citing multiple unnamed sources, Danish public broadcaster DR and other news organizations in Germany, France, Norway and Sweden reported that a confidential Danish intelligence analysis reviewed the NSA’s relationship with FE from 2012 to 2014. This so-called Dunhammer report, conducted by four specialized FE agents following the Snowden revelations and concluded in 2015, found that the NSA was able to use Danish eavesdropping systems on submarine internet cables, with Denmark’s knowledge and agreement.

The media reports describe a system of Danish-American cooperation used to surveil and stock data from underwater internet cables. DR reports that a data center was even built for that purpose at a Danish intelligence facility on the island of Amager, south of Copenhagen.

Merkel was reportedly among the targets, as well as two of her past rivals for the chancellery, Social Democrats Peer Steinbrück and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the latter of whom is now the German president. DR also reported that other high-level officials had been surveilled from France, Norway and Sweden, though did not name them.

Contacted by the news organizations conducting the investigation, the German, Swedish and Norwegian governments said they had not been aware of the Danish intelligence report’s conclusions, while the office of the French president declined to respond.

Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen declined to comment to DR, writing only that “systematic interception of close allies is unacceptable.”

The media investigation was conducted in collaboration with French newspaper Le Monde, German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung, German broadcasters NDR and WDR, and public broadcasters from Sweden (SVT) and Norway (NRK).

In the wake of the 2013 Snowden reports, Obama committed to stop spying on allies. Le Monde said it was unclear at this point whether the spying via Danish systems happened prior to, or after, this promise.

[tiny-fist]

Something which had me cackling today:

(My source is a private blog but I checked it's sources and they are legit :-))

Wolfgang Schäuble, important German politician (was e. g. minister for inner affairs, and president of the Bundestag), held a laudatory speech for politician Peer Steinbrück who won a prize for his book.

In this laudatory speech, at least this is what the newspaper article says, he quoted "Marcus Tullius Cicero". The fact is: He didn't.

Actually, he quoted Tiro who said what Cicero had said to him in Robert Harris's novel "Imperium".

And it's such genius that there's this happy picture of Schäuble congratulating Steinbrück in the article while Jutta's genius found them out...

[collapsedsquid]

In 2009, during the first grand coalition under Angela Merkel, Scholz was among the SPD MPs who voted in favour of the constitutional debt brake. This balanced budget rule went further than the stability pact. It preceded the era of austerity that almost ripped the euro area apart. It led to chronic under-investment, from which the euro area is still suffering today. Scholz was labour minister at the time, not directly responsible. The actual author of the debt brake was another social democrat, Peer Steinbrück, then finance minister. But Scholz was a strong and vocal supporter of this policy.

Scholz changed his mind on the debt brake. I would never blame politicians for changing their mind after a mistake. That said, Scholz has a history of supporting ordo-liberal, conservative economic policies. As chancellor, he may do the same, just like his mentor, Gerhard Schröder.

So why are Social Democrats fiscally conservative? After the second world war, the SPD was the party of Keynesian economics. The most famous representative of that movement was Karl Schiller, the great SPD economics minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His disciple was Helmut Schmidt, who later became chancellor. The era of fiscal conservatism started in the 1980s when the SPD was in opposition. The party convinced itself that it had to become respectable by endorsing economic conservatism. The SPD, like the Democrats in the US, also became fully paid-up subscribers of financial deregulation. There is nothing that scares a social democrat more than being called fiscally irresponsible or financially illiterate. This also explains the proximity of leading Social Democrats to financial power. Rich people give them respectability.

Hope and Change

[nemolian]

The NSA Reportedly Used Denmark's Internet Cables to Spy on European Politicians

Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images (Getty Images)

French and German political leaders are “seeking full clarity” after a recent report has alleged that the U.S. colluded with Denmark several years ago to spy on European government officials—even going so far as to read bureaucrats’ emails and text messages.

A recent investigation from Denmark’s independent public service broadcaster (DR) shows that Denmark’s top intelligence agency offered assistance to the U.S. National Security Agency as it attempted to surveil politicians connected to the European Union—including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to DR, the spying was part of a coordinated effort in which the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (abbreviated “FE”) gave the NSA access to Danish internet cables, which allowed it to intercept web traffic flowing through a number of European nations. In this way, the NSA could eavesdrop on “Norwegian, Swedish, German and French top politicians and officials,” the report claims.

It’s unclear how long the spying campaign lasted. The claims are based on an internal report commissioned by FE codenamed Operation Dunhammer that covered activities by the agency between 2012 and 2014. The “Dunhammer” report was completed in 2015, but has only now been made available to the public through DR’s reporting.

The findings essentially expand on disclosures made by Edward Snowden in 2013, when the former NSA-contractor’s leaks showed that the U.S had engaged in widespread and ongoing spying targeted at its political allies. At the time, the infamous breach showed that the NSA had monitored the phone calls of 35 different world leaders for some unknown period of time. Germany’s Merkel was singled out in the press as having been one such leader.

“This is not acceptable between allies, and even less between allies and European partners,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday during a recent Franco German video summit. “We requested that our Danish and American partners provide all the information on these revelations and on these past facts. We are awaiting these answers.” Similarly, Merkel said she agreed with Macron’s “assertion that wiretapping between allies was unacceptable,” CNN reports.

G/O Media may get a commission

Other targets of the alleged surveillance included “former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrück,” reports Reuters. According to the outlet, Steinbrück responded to the recent report by telling a German broadcaster that he thought it was “grotesque that friendly intelligence services are indeed intercepting and spying on top representatives” of other countries.

The U.S.’s response has basically been to shrug and throw up its hands. According to the Washington Post, numerous current and former U.S. officials have responded to the allegations by quipping that such spying “should not come as a surprise, because allies routinely spy on each other.” It’s a justification that has been made numerous times before.

While the ubiquity of political spying among “friendly” nations is a historical fact, few countries have been caught doing it as much or as aggressively as America. Case in point, previous reporting has suggested that Merkel was actually under U.S. surveillance for several decades—which would mean that a majority of her political career played out under the watchful eye of the American surveillance state. With friends like these...

via:Gizmodo, June 1, 2021 at 10:15PM

[aktionfsa-blog-blog]

Berater contra gesundem Menschenverstand

Finanzminister und ihre Finanzberater

WERNER RÜGEMER, freier Publizist und Autor fragte sich in der aktuellen verdi Publik, wie es passieren konnte dass insgesamt 4 bundesdeutsche Finanzminister nichts gegen die Cum-Ex Geschäfte der Banken taten und damit einen Schaden von über 50 Milliarden Euro für den deutschen Steuerzahler anhäufen konnten.

Schon vor 2 Jahren erhoben wir die Forderung nach Verfolgung der Cum-Ex Steuerbetrüger doch geschehen ist bis heute wenig. Die Prozesse, die inzwischen begonnen haben, dümpeln so vor sich hin, viele wurde erst gar nicht eröffnet. Ein erstes Urteil des Landgerichts Bonn fiel milde aus: Cum-Ex ist eine schwere Straftat, die Angeklagten kamen trotzdem mit Bewährung davon.

Ist es legal, dass wir einem Aktienbesitzer eine Steuer zurückzahlen, die der gar nicht bezahlt hat?

An dieser einfachen Frage sind die 4 Finanzminister Hans Eichel, Peer Steinbrück, Wolfgang Schäuble, Olaf Scholz allesamt gescheitert. Während jeder normale Mensch obige Frage mit NEIN beantwortet, haben die Minister hochbezahlte Besserwisser gefragt.

Das war u.a. die „renommierte", global tätige Wirtschaftskanzlei Freshfields mit Hauptsitz im Finanzzentrum London. Sie wusste die Antwort: Ja, es ist legal, eine nicht gezahlte Kapitalertragssteuer darf auch an einen Aktionär ausgezahlt werden, der gar keine Kapitalertragssteuer gezahlt hat. Und diese Operation wurde möglich, weil andere „renommierte", hochbezahlte Besserwisser die sogenannten Cum-Ex-Geschäfte entwickelt hatten: Kurz vor dem Auszahlungstag der Dividende an den Aktionär leiht sich ein zweiter oder auch ein dritter „Investor" gegen eine kleine Gebühr die Aktie aus („Leerverkäufe"), gibt sich seinem Finanzamt gegenüber als Aktienbesitzer aus und behauptet, der zuständige Konzern, zum Beispiel Siemens oder die Depotbank, habe gesetzestreu die Kapitalertragssteuer zurückbehalten. Weil es für Aktionäre viele Steuervergünstigungen gibt, haben die meisten das Recht, dass ihnen die Steuer rückerstattet wird.

Die Anwälte von Freshfields stellten den beteiligten Banken, also zum Beispiel der Deutschen Bank, der Commerzbank, der Warburg und Maple-Bank, Gutachten aus: Die Rückzahlung nicht gezahlter Steuer ist legal!

Die Finanzämter blickten bei den komplizierten Karussellgeschäften anfangs nicht durch. Interessant wird es dann, wenn Finanzbeamte doch tätig wurden, wie es mehrmals in Hessen geschah und diese dann erst zu psychatrischen Gutachten bestellt und dann in den Ruhestand versetzt wurden.

Werden die Falsch-Berater nun zur Rechenschaft gezogen?

Nein, im Gegenteil, noch 2015 lobte der damalige Hamburger Bürgermeister Olaf Scholz, SPD, und jetziger Finanzminister, die Kanzlei Freshfields:

Sie sei „unbestechlich, dem geradlinigen Gang verpflichtet. Sie hat unsere Gesellschaft immer wieder aktiv mitgestaltet". Scholz war der Festredner zum Jubiläum der Kanzlei. Richtig ist: Freshfields hat die Bundesregierungen seit Kanzler Gerhard Schröder, SPD, in Milliardenverluste hineinberaten, hat das für die öffentliche Hand so nachteilige Vertragsmuster Public Private Partnership (PPP/ÖPP) mitentwickelt, hat den 17.000-Seiten-Geheimvertrag zu Toll Collect (Lkw-Maut) genauso verfasst wie die Gesetze zur Bankenrettung.

PS. Auch der jetzige Verkehrsminister Andreas Scheuer, CSU, wirft Freshfields Millionenbeträge hinterher. Und Freshfields ist nicht der einzige derartige Staats-, Landes- und Kommunalberater wie wir aus dem beratungsaffinen Verteidigungsministerium unter Ursula von der Leyen gehört haben ...

Mehr dazu in verdi Publik 6/20, Sep.20 und in Forderung nach Verfolgung der Cum-Ex Steuerbetrüger

und https://www.aktion-freiheitstattangst.org/de/articles/7412-20201005-berater-contra-gesundem-menschenverstand.htm

[korrektheiten]

Die Schuldenbremse muss weg

NachDenkSeiten: »„Wer auch zukünftig einen handlungsfähigen Staat will, muss die Schulden- und Zinslast reduzieren.“ Das sagte Peer Steinbrück als Bundesfinanzminister 2009 im Bundestag. Danach beschloss das Parlament die Schuldenbremse mit den Stimmen der Großen Koalition. Der Zeitgeist war pro Schuldenbremse, auch bei den Grünen, die das Gesetz ablehnten. Der damalige Fraktionsvorsitzende Fritz Kuhn hieltWeiterlesen http://dlvr.it/Sz3nV1 «

[antoine-roquentin]

The fissuring of the German left after Agenda 2010 opened the door to the CDU’s recovery of power. Though Die Linke and Merkel are radically different expressions of post-reunification politics, they condition each other. Despite her formidable reputation, Merkel is not a successful electoral campaigner. In 2005, at the height of the turmoil and indignation stirred up by Agenda 2010, she managed only to inch the SPD out, 35.2 to 34.2 per cent. Her brand of neoliberalism stirred anxiety among CDU voters as much as Schröder’s did on the left. Only once, in 2009, did she win a vote share large enough to enable a centre-right coalition with the FDP. For three of her four governments, Merkel has relied on a grand coalition with the SPD. The impact on the SPD has been deeply ambiguous. On the one hand, except for the interlude of 2009-13, the SPD has been in government in Berlin for 21 years continuously. On the other hand the loss of identity, already visible under Schröder, has been ever more pronounced.

Governing with Merkel is dangerous. She is no ordinary conservative. Paying relentless attention to opinion polls, she omnivorously absorbs the agendas of her partners and opponents. This gives hardline conservatives little to cheer about. In electoral terms the CDU, like the SPD, has suffered a serious decline. And as conservative strategists have long worried, Merkel’s move to the centre opens space for a hard right alternative, an opportunity that the AfD seized in 2015. But the truth is that given the alignment of German political forces, Merkel simply did not need the right wing. The SPD has supplied her with the votes she needed to govern from the centre. As both parties have discovered, access to power in Berlin today depends less on your absolute share of the vote than on your place in the coalitional algebra.

The SPD was by no means a passive victim of these developments. For 15 years it has chosen to double down on the Schröder agenda. In 2009 the party fought a losing election with Steinmeier, the orchestrator of Agenda 2010, as its Spitzenkandidat. Then in 2013 the party grandees nominated Peer Steinbrück, who as finance minister in 2008 took responsibility for the bank bailouts. He can also claim credit for the Schuldenbremse, the ‘debt brake’ amendment to the constitution which throttles public spending. The notorious ‘schwarze Null’ (the fiscal surplus), popularly associated with Wolfgang Schäuble, is actually a creation of the SPD. Perversely, this fiscal discipline bears most heavily on the weakest Länder, including North Rhine-Westphalia and Bremen, which were once bastions of the SPD. It was not until 2013, after its third consecutive loss, that the SPD made any effort to change direction.

Under the new rules of the Berlin game, losing to Merkel in 2013 didn’t mean the SPD was out of power. It meant that it governed with her. And the social democrats extracted a heavy price. Not only the foreign ministry, but justice, the economy, labour and social affairs, family and youth and environmental policy were all in the hands of the SPD, at least some of whom were now determined to distance themselves from Agenda 2010. Their key demand, in the face of howls of protest from employers, was a minimum wage.

In the heyday of the German model, when wages were set by collective bargaining arrangements, there was no need for such regulations. But in the new era of flexible, low-paid work, the minimum wage of €8.50 an hour brought relief to some four million workers when it was introduced in 2015. Combined with the continued growth of the German economy and other incremental changes to the benefit system, it has lifted the acute economic insecurity of the early 2000s. Nachtwey’s dark vision of social crisis and downward mobility better describes the situation a decade ago than in Germany today. Even in the east, conditions are improving. If the AfD is a conflagration born of the socioeconomic crisis, it is of the slow-burning variety. It’s also clear, however, that the SPD gets no credit for its earnest efforts to rebalance the Agenda 2010 model. The party’s fate will be decided not by its success or failure in delivering specific social policies, but by its ability to tie its identity to a compelling diagnosis of Germany’s current problems and a credible account of its role in the recent past.

For the 2017 campaign, the party apparatchiks plumped for a fresh face – Martin Schulz, a former president of the European Parliament. As described by Markus Feldenkirchen in Die Schulz Story, despite his endorsement of Agenda 2010 in years gone by, Schulz’s rocky personal biography and folksy manner vouched for the authenticity of his commitment to a more egalitarian politics. But rather than giving him a clear mandate on social inequality and Europe, which would have played to his strengths, the party managers decided to pit his personal appeal against Merkel’s. For a delirious few weeks it seemed that it might work. But by the summer his political stock had collapsed. The election was a disaster. Not only was it the worst result in a national election since 1949, there was not a single Land in which the SPD scored more than 30 per cent. Of the voters the party had retained, a quarter were over the age of 70.

The election results in September 2017 were bad for the SPD, but the aftermath was worse. Merkel tried, first, for an unprecedented ‘Jamaica’ coalition – the CDU/CSU (black) with the FDP (yellow) and the Greens. After six weeks the FDP walked away and the talks broke down. That left the options of new elections – unattractive given surging support for the AfD – or another Große Koalition. The SPD was bitterly divided. Kevin Kühnert, the leader of the party’s 70,000-strong youth wing, mobilised against the GroKo. But he was fought to a standstill by a powerful lobby in favour of it, headed by Olaf Scholz, a party boss from Hamburg, and Andrea Nahles, once on the party’s left wing, who became leader in April 2018.

Once again the SPD extracted a steep price for its co-operation with Merkel. To the horror of conservatives and the business lobby, the chancellor turned a blind eye while SPD ministers launched a raft of new social and environmental policies. But once again, the SPD in government with Merkel lacks credibility. This year’s European elections gave the party its worst result in a national ballot since 1887. And the data are worse when broken down demographically. Among voters under thirty, the SPD scores no more than 10 per cent. While Scholz and other senior SPD ministers remain in office, Nahles has resigned from all her party positions. Until the next party conference, scheduled for December, the SPD is without a leader. There are no candidates. It seems inconceivable that anyone who backs the coalition with the CDU could be a candidate. But an anti-GroKo candidate would hasten a new election, which is a terrifying prospect.

*

What is remarkable – the third big story in German politics in the last four years – is who has benefited from the SPD’s collapse. Not the CDU, whose results are by its own standards barely less disastrous than the SPD’s. Outside the east, the AfD seems to have hit a ceiling at around 10 per cent. Die Linke, worried about competition on the right, has impaled itself on arguments about immigration policy. The FDP’s refusal to take a share of power in 2017 has left it sidelined. The great beneficiaries of the upheaval are the Greens.

Immediately after the collapse of the Jamaica coalition talks in 2017, the Greens’ poll numbers surged. In the recent European elections their record result of 20.5 per cent put them in second place for the first time in a national poll. That breakthrough seems only to have increased their momentum. They now regularly poll over 25 per cent, ahead of the CDU. Their leaders, Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, are inexperienced but charismatic. They clearly stand for the party’s shift to the mainstream. The Greens have established a business council, frequented by senior management from the chemical giant BASF, Accenture consulting and the reinsurance group Munich Re. The party that once represented the ecofundamentalist fringe no longer shrinks from the project of greening German capitalism.

The most widely discussed option for the future is a Black-Green coalition: a modernised CDU and a moderated Green party in a new-style centrist formation. Something of the kind operates in Baden-Württemberg. But it’s unclear whether the Green base in the rest of the country will tolerate such a conservative deal. On the same day as the European elections, Bremen held a vote, which brought another historic defeat for the SPD. Having ruled the city uninterruptedly since 1945, it took only 25 per cent of the vote. The ‘winner’ was the CDU. But it cannot govern alone, which makes the Greens the kingmakers. To the dismay of the party’s Berlin leadership, rather than talk to the conservatives, the Bremen Greens entered talks for a Green-Red-Red coalition, with the defeated SPD and Die Linke.

Bremen, a heavily indebted post-industrial port, is the smallest state of the republic. But if its coalition model were to catch on in Berlin, it would cause an earthquake. The Red-Red-Green option is the one that the SPD leadership, in better times, refused to countenance. Now it is one of the few possibilities left. And it is all the more significant now that the CDU has to deal with its own split on the right wing. The CDU’s reaction to the news from Bremen was telling. Merkel’s designated successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, immediately denounced the move, declaring that the Greens had revealed their true left-wing nature, and voters who hoped to bring about a change of government by supporting the Greens were naively opening the door to Die Linke. But this rhetoric cannot disguise the difficulty of the CDU’s position. What options has the retiring Merkel left her party? Given the CDU’s diminished polling, a coalition with the FDP alone is no longer enough. Would the CDU want to pursue an ‘Austrian option’ – a coalition with the AfD? Such a scenario is conceivable at the Länder level in the east. In regional elections in Saxony and Brandenburg later this year, the AfD is likely to consolidate its position as the leading party of the right. But at the federal level there is nothing that would do more to rally a majority for a Red-Red-Green coalition than the prospect of a CDU-AfD connubio.

[masherbrum]

This is from Helmut Schmidt’s office in his private house (which can be visited virtually here - it’s a nice house, btw).

SPD 2013? The guy on the right is the 2013 version of Martin Chulz, Peer Steinbrück. He got 25%. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

This is the original drawing, depicting the Congress of Berlin from 1878. Steinbrück is Disraeli, Schmidt is Alexander Gorchakov, the Russian Foreign Minister. I definitely don’t have a clue if and how the roles from Gorchakov/Disraeli and Schmidt/Steinbrück align somehow. Apparently the Russians weren’t that happy with the outcome of the Congress, tho (And also Schmidt probably wasn’t that happy with the 2013 elections).

[cdcomputer]

Danish secret service helped NSA spy on Merkel, EU officials: report

Danish secret service helped NSA spy on Merkel, EU officials: report

Media investigation claims Denmark cooperated with US spying on European politicians.

Denmark’s secret services helped the U.S. National Security Agency spy on European officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, under the Barack Obama administration, according to reports by multiple European news outlets.

Reports of the NSA spying on U.S. allies first came to light in 2013 through disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden, but the new investigation published Sunday details alleged support from the Defense Intelligence Service (FE) in Denmark, Germany’s northern neighbor.

Citing multiple unnamed sources, Danish public broadcaster DR and other news organizations in Germany, France, Norway and Sweden reported that a confidential Danish intelligence analysis reviewed the NSA’s relationship with FE from 2012 to 2014. This so-called Dunhammer report, conducted by four specialized FE agents following the Snowden revelations and concluded in 2015, found that the NSA was able to use Danish eavesdropping systems on submarine internet cables, with Denmark’s knowledge and agreement.

The media reports describe a system of Danish-American cooperation used to surveil and stock data from underwater internet cables. DR reports that a data center was even built for that purpose at a Danish intelligence facility on the island of Amager, south of Copenhagen.

Merkel was reportedly among the targets, as well as two of her past rivals for the chancellery, Social Democrats Peer Steinbrück and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the latter of whom is now the German president. DR also reported that other high-level officials had been surveilled from France, Norway and Sweden, though did not name them.

Contacted by the news organizations conducting the investigation, the German, Swedish and Norwegian governments said they had not been aware of the Danish intelligence report’s conclusions, while the office of the French president declined to respond.

Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen declined to comment to DR, writing only that “systematic interception of close allies is unacceptable.”

The media investigation was conducted in collaboration with French newspaper Le Monde, German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung, German broadcasters NDR and WDR, and public broadcasters from Sweden (SVT) and Norway (NRK).

In the wake of the 2013 Snowden reports, Obama committed to stop spying on allies. Le Monde said it was unclear at this point whether the spying via Danish systems happened prior to, or after, this promise.

[letitiapalmer]

丹麦情报机构曾帮助美国国家安全局监听欧盟国家领导人，其中包括德国总理默克尔和时任外长施泰因迈尔。

(德国之声中文网）根据日前（5月30日）公布的一项欧洲媒体联合调查报告，丹麦情报机构曾帮助美国国家安全局监听欧盟国家领导人，其中包括德国总理默克尔和时任外长施泰因迈尔。

不光是默克尔 时任德国社民党总理候选人的施泰因布吕克（Peer Steinbrück）也成为监听对象

德国官方反应

得知自己也曾是受监听对象后，时任联邦财政部长的施泰因布吕克在接受参与联合调查的德国媒体采访时强调，"在政治上，我认为这是一桩丑闻。" 他说，虽然他接受西方国家也需要有运作良好的情报部门这一点，但丹麦当局对其合作伙伴从事间谍活动，这一事实表明，"他们有点自行其是"。

有关丹麦高阶官员从事这一间谍活动，默克尔和施泰因迈尔均 "不知情"。一位发言人表示，默克尔总理本人已被告知这些现被披露的信息。