German Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to push for tougher European laws to protect personal information on the internet.

Germany wants internet companies "to tell us in Europe who they are giving data to", she said in a TV interview with the public broadcaster ARD.

Merkel also said she expected the US to abide by German law.

"I expect a clear commitment from the US government that in future they will stick to German law," she said.

Merkel’s statement follows revelations that France, Greece and Italy have been the "targets" of US spying operations, according to a document by the National Security Agency, leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

One document lists 38 embassies and missions, describing them as "targets". It details an extraordinary range of spying methods used against each target, from bugs implanted in electronic communications gear to taps into cables to the collection of transmissions with specialised antennae.

The BBC's Stephen Evans in Berlin says the chancellor is under pressure to disclose how much her government knew about the activities of the American National Security Agency (NSA), and to ensure that Germans' closely-guarded privacy is not compromised.

In her Sunday evening interview, she pledged that her government would take a "very strict position" in ongoing talks on European Union-wide data rules.

She noted that the different systems in place across the EU make it difficult to control who has access to internet users' data:

"We have a great data protection law. But if Facebook is registered in Ireland, then Irish law is valid, and therefore we need unified European rules," she said.

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