US Spying Charges Give New Impetus to EU Digital Summit

Fresh allegations of spying by the National Security Agency have given new momentum to a proposal to strengthen the European Union's privacy rules ahead of a two-day summit in Brussels, which aims to find ways to generate growth in the bloc's digital economy.

European leaders are set to renew a push for a tough new data-protection law and lay out a schedule to get it finished next year. A version of the privacy law, which includes provisions like an online "right to be forgotten," was approved with unusual speed earlier this week by a European parliamentary committee, after being bogged down for nearly two years in debate and heavy lobbying. Behind the shift: A cascade of reports since June about the scale of U.S. electronic surveillance -- most recently, Germany's allegation that the US may be spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone -- have helped shift the conversation in Europe toward shoring up privacy controls, national and European officials said.