Washington’s efforts to contain fallout from the Snowden espionage debacle unravelled dramatically on Sunday as the European Union and individual European governments nations were revealed as targets of industrial-scale American snooping into government and private communications around the globe.

Suggesting that the leaker, former contract intelligence worker Edward Snowden, has put in place an elaborate country-by-country plan of leaks to cause maximum diplomatic embarrassment for the US, the German magazine Der Spiegel published the first in what is says is a series of reports, causing near-apoplexy in the capitals of the continent.

Edward Snowden's latest leak has revealed a huge US surveillance program targeting its EU partners. Credit:Reuters

According to the Der Spiegel reports, The US National Security Agency has bugged the EU offices in Washington and its mission to the United Nations in New York and has hacked into the EU’s computer network, directing a flood of EU correspondence, documentation and high-level meeting conversations to analysts in the US.

Also revealed is a huge eavesdropping operation in Brussels, seemingly conducted from a building at the headquarters of NATO, of which 20 or more European countries are members, against on the telecommunications system at the EU headquarters in the same city. According to the reports, every EU member state has rooms at the building, with telephone and internet connections, which are used by EU ministers.