President Barack Obama asked Germans to give the United States the “benefit of the doubt” when it comes to snooping by the National Security Agency.

In a Monday joint press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel held at the White House on Monday, Obama said he recognizes “the sensitivities around this issue.”

In October 2013, German media reported that Merkel had “strong suspicions” that her personal cellphone was being monitored by American authorities.

White House spokesman Jay Carney unequivocally told reporters at the time that such surveillance was not continuing, but he did not directly deny the allegations of past conduct. The next year, Germany decided not to renew its government contract with Verizon, citing concerns over spying by the National Security Agency.

Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence made minor changes to its spying protocols, which many legal experts decried as mere window dressing.

On Monday, Obama added:

What I would ask would be that the German people recognize that the United States has always been on the forefront of trying to promote civil liberties, that we have traditions of due process that we respect, that we have been a consistent partner of yours in the course of the last 70 years, and certainly the last 25 years, in reinforcing the values that we share. And so occasionally I would like the German people to give us the benefit of the doubt, given our history, as opposed to assuming the worst—assuming that we have been consistently your strong partners and that we share a common set of values. And if we have that fundamental, underlying trust, there are going to be times where there are disagreements, and both sides may make mistakes, and there are going to be irritants like there are between friends, but the underlying foundation for the relationship remains sound.

For her part, Chancellor Merkel largely sidestepped the issue.

“I think there are still different assessments on individual issues there, but if we look at the sheer dimension of the terrorist threat, we are more than aware of the fact that we need to work together very closely,” she said, according to a White House transcript.

“And I, as German Chancellor, want to state here very clearly that the institutions of the United States of America have provided us and still continue to provide us with a lot of very significant, very important information that also ensure our security. And we don’t want to do without this. There are other possibilities, through the cyber dialogue, for example, to continue to talk about the sort of protection of privacy versus data protection and so on, and security. But this was basically—combating terrorism was basically in the forefront today.”