Panic in EU as America gets the China-treatment with staff given burner phones | World | News
Some European Union (EU) staff are being given burner phones and basic laptops before flying to the USA over fears they will be spied on by American intelligence. The new guidance, which is usually reserved for trips to China, has been put in place because the EU is “worried about the US getting into the commission systems”, according to sources.
Commissioners and senior officials are travelling to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, both in Washington DC, next week. Four well-placed sources told the Financial Times that the tech downgrade for EU staff is usually a measure taken when officials are travelling to China or Ukraine due to fears over surveillance from Beijing and Moscow.
The revelations speak to the deterioration in relations between the White House and EU Commission since January 20 when Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term. His tariffs, combined with his claims that the EU was set up to “screw the US”, as well as the US’ retreat from its security role in Europe, led one EU official to say in recent weeks that “the transatlantic alliance is over”.
EU trade negotiator Maroš Šefčovič is in Washington on Monday to meet his US counterpart Howard Lutnick. Later in April, three other commissioners are expected in the US capital for meetings at the IMF and World Bank. Some of those arriving in the US have reported facing extra scrutiny at the border, including searches of phones and computers. According to a French minister in March, a French academic had been refused entry to the US at the border after his phone was searched and anti-Trump messages were found.
France’s Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste said that “he had learned with concern that a French academic who was going to a conference in Houston was denied entry before being deported”.
“This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained conversations with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy”.
