@Walter Hinteler,
The German foreign intelligence had spied for years on French government, European Union officials and German and European businesses at the behest of the United States National Security Agency.
According to a report [a leaked German intelligence report, first published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper] German and US officials were said to have remained exempt because they were protected by a BND-NSA agreement signed in 2002. It said that in 2013 the NSA fed the BND with 690,000 phone numbers and 7.8 million IP search codes that it wanted put under surveillance.
It emerged that in 2008, Germany’s current conservative Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière, was the chancellery official directly responsible for the BND. At that time, the report claimed, the BND informed the chancellery that it was assisting the NSA in its spying operation against Germany’s European partners. They obviously didn't report the industrial espionage - at least, it looks like until tonight.