France and Germany are leading calls for a relaxation of European privacy rules to allow interception of private internet communications to aid the fight against terror.

Both states have asked the European Union’s executive body to instruct messaging services to decrypt communications between terror suspects to aid investigators as national security agencies struggle to intercept and decode a stream of messages between Islamic State militants and other extremists.

Speaking at a joint press conference with his German counterpart French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said: “Messages exchanged through certain apps such as Telegram must be decrypted and used as evidence by magistrates and investigators as part of legal proceedings.”

The encryption offered by popular apps such as Facebook’s WhatsApp, Apple’s iMessage and Telegram has previously been highlighted as a concern by European authorities following a series of attacks on the continent.