The same newspaper reported that Germany's BND had active wire taps on 2 US secretaries of state, (Hillary) Clinton and Kerry, as well heavily spying on NATO members like Turkey.
Snowden's own documents showed many EU countries (including all of the enlightened Nordic ones) who actively supported the US spying in order to gain intelligence on their own citizens and on other EU members, heck Denmark joined the NSA programme to spy on freaking Belgium.
The harsh truth is that everyone spies, even Iceland has some dude in an office some where who's in charge of their intelligence gathering. The means and effectiveness vary between nations but considering that the UK, Germany and France have intelligence services which are considered amongst of the best in the world only a fool would write this off as some US fling due to post cold war PTSD.
Snowden's own documents showed many EU countries (including all of the enlightened Nordic ones) who actively supported the US spying in order to gain intelligence on their own citizens and on other EU members, heck Denmark joined the NSA programme to spy on freaking Belgium.
The harsh truth is that everyone spies, even Iceland has some dude in an office some where who's in charge of their intelligence gathering. The means and effectiveness vary between nations but considering that the UK, Germany and France have intelligence services which are considered amongst of the best in the world only a fool would write this off as some US fling due to post cold war PTSD.