Angela Merkel has said she expects the US not to break German laws in data collection. A newspaper has reported that Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service knew about the US National Security Agency’s snooping for years.

The online espionage activities of the National Security Agency have firmly established themselves as an election talking point in Germany.

"I expect a clear commitment from the US government that they will adhere to German law in the future when on German soil," Merkel said, adding that she did not yet know whether German laws were breached by the NSA or other bodies in the past. "We are friends and allies. We are in a defense alliance and we need to be able to rely on each other."


Ends versus means
The Christian Democrat said that while cooperative efforts to combat terrorism were important and would continue, boundaries should be defined, preferably on an international scale.
"Not everything that is technically feasible - and more and more will be in the future - should be allowed," Merkel said. "The ends don't justify the means here, in our view."

The chancellor added that she would sound out EU leaders on a continental data protection standard agreed by all, saying strong German data protection laws could do nothing to help people using websites based abroad.
"We have a truly excellent federal data protection law, but if Facebook is registered in Ireland, then Irish law applies, and that's why we need a unified European directive," Merkel said. The chancellor also said that, so far as she was aware, her communications had not been tapped.



Asleep at the wheel?
Opposition politicians have sought to pounce on the government's reaction to the NSA spying allegations, claiming that German authorities must have known about the activities and arguing that the government's response was too soft once Snowden went public.

"Mrs. Merkel has sworn as chancellor to protect the German people from harm," Social Democrat challenger Peer Steinbrück said in an interview with the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag, calling for a parliamentary probe into possible dereliction of duty. "I envisage damage limitation as something rather different."

"Whoever is at the wheel carries the responsibility, regardless of whether they're awake or have dozed off," Steinbrück surmised.

Steinbrück's colleague, SPD secretary general Andrea Nahles, said Merkel's Sunday interview offered only "trivialities."

Meanwhile the daily newspaper Bild reported Monday that Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service has known about NSA snooping for years. Bild reported that the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) had, for example, asked US intelligence services for help when German citizens were kidnapped abroad.

"We know of a long cooperation between the German intelligence service and US agencies," an official quoted by the newspaper said. "The government has not made the details of this cooperation public, except for to a parliamentary committee."

Election countdown

September 22: Germany votes
41% - CDU poll rating
5 % - pro-business Free Democrats (CDU allied)

If the elections were today "Frau" Merkel could not form a government. 

 Sorce: msh, mkg/av (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

The main candidates in Sunday's German election have made final appeals to undecided voters. Chancellor Angela Merkel lobbied in Berlin while Social Democrat rival Peer Steinbrück campaigned in Frankfurt.

election outcome remained unpredictable on election eve Saturday, with polls showing Merkel's coalition allies the pro-business Free Democrats hovering at the 5 percent threshold for parliamentary representation.

Speculation continued that Merkel's conservatives could end up forming a grand coalition with the center-left opposition Social Democrats (SPD) headed by Steinbrück, who himself favors the Greens. Pre-election surveys put Merkel's conservatives 13 percent ahead of the SPD.

Merkel defends EU

Merkel on Saturday addressed 4,000 of her conservative supporters in Berlin, telling them she needed a "strong mandate," before heading to the Baltic Sea port city of Stralsund to appeal to voters in her home electorate.

Before departing Berlin, she said she wanted to continue leading Europe's biggest economy as "your chancellor for another four years." She spent half of her speech defending the European Union.

"In the coming years we must keeping working for the success of this wonderful continent," she said to loud applause.

She also acknowledged that "lots of people won't make up their mind until the last minute."

"Yes, it will be close," Merkel later told a crowd of 2,000 in Stralsund, referring to the race for the 598-seat federal parliament, the Bundestag.

Steinbrück highlights social imbalance

Visiting Frankfurt on his final campaign day, Steinbrück answered voters' questions on his calls for a standard minimum wage and his accusations that under Merkel Germany has witnessed a worsening gap between rich and poor.

He echoed Merkel in defending the euro against euroskeptics, but slammed Merkel's governance of the past four years.

"You can get rid of the most backward-looking, least capable, most loud-mouthed German government since reunification," Steinbrück said.

Between 2005 and 2009, Steinbrück served as SPD finance minister in a Merkel-led grand coalition. Welfare and labor market changes cost the SPD millions of voters in 2009, when Merkel won and sided with the FDP.

He spoke as electioneering also continued in Germany's commercial center for a parallel election on Sunday to pick the next assembly of the surrounding regional state Hesse. Its assembly is located in Wiesbaden.

Poll 'not decided,' say Greens

Greens' leading candidate, Katrin Göring Eckardt told a rally in Berlin late Friday that despite declining survey results Sunday's election outcome was "still absolutely not decided."

Her co-lead-candidate Jürgen Trittin said the Greens were aiming for a better result than the 10.7 percent garnered in Germany's 2009 federal election.

Unknowns remain

Berlin Free University political scientist Gero Neugebauer said doubts remained about a continuation of Merkel's existing coalition, comprising her Christian Democrats (CDU), Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the liberal FDP.

Two new surveys published Friday placed Merkel's existing coalition in a dead heat at 45 to 45 percent, facing - mathematically at least - a center-left array of SPD, Greens and the Left. Pre-election surveys have, however, also shown up to a third of voters undecided.

On their own, Merkel's CDU and Bavarian CSU allies could amass 40 percent, according to surveys. The opposition SPD is on about 26 percent and its preferred partner the Greens on nine percent. The Left is also put at 9 percent.

The FDP, stung by 3.3 percent and its regional assembly exit in Bavaria's state election last weekend, has spend the final week urging voters nationwide to "split their ballot by casting constituency vote for Merkel but donate their second or party "list-vote" to keep the liberals in the federal parliament.

Merkel and other senior conservatives have dismissed the liberal's tactical move, urging instead that conservatives vote for Merkel and her CDU/CSU alliance.

Bavaria's Seehofer slams FDP campaign

Bavarian leader Horst Seehofer, whose CSU savored 47.7 in last Sunday's southern election, demanded on Saturday that the FDP drop its second "list-vote" campaign.

Undeterred, Foreign Minister and former FDP leader Guido Westerwelle lobbied conservatives to donate their second votes during a FDP rally in Düsseldorf

Lying in surveys under the 5-percent hurdle are the once-prominent Internet-savvy Pirates and the new euroskeptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 4 percent.

Sunday's election involves 61.8 million registered voters holding German nationality and a total of 34 parties. Among them are 3 million first-time voters who have turned 18 since the last general election in 2009.

ipj/rc (AFP, dpa, Reuters)