PARIS — The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, considered Europe’s top human rights award, has been bestowed on luminaries like Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. This year, in a slap against Washington, the award could go to Edward J. Snowden, known as either the N.S.A. whistle-blower or a traitor, depending on one’s perspective.

The European Parliament, the European Union’s only directly elected body, nominated Mr. Snowden for the prize late Monday. The others in contention include Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl who was 14 when the Taliban shot her in October but survived to become a potent voice in the struggle for education rights for women; Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon and Kremlin critic who is imprisoned in Russia; and Erdem Gunduz, who helped inspire the mass protests against the Turkish government’s perceived authoritarianism this year in Istanbul’s Taksim Square.

The nomination of Mr. Snowden is the latest in a series of rebukes from European lawmakers upset with the Obama administration’s foreign policies, including its surveillance program. More recently, the British Parliament refused to authorize the country’s participation in a military strike against Syria for a gas attack that killed more than 1,400 civilians. Only France, which does not require legislative approval of military actions, backed President Obama’s call to punish Syria for using chemical weapons.

While hardly as momentous as the Syria vote, the nomination of Mr. Snowden carries great symbolic weight. It glaringly illustrates the chasm the leaks have opened between the United States and its allies, not only European countries but also Brazil, Mexico and other nations that have been spied on by the National Security Agency.