Discussions are to go ahead in the coming weeks over an umbrella data protection agreement to make personal information transferred between the US and the EU safer.
Viviane Reding, vice president of justice, fundamental rights and citizenship at the European Commission, said that all information transfers from Europe to the US need to be "subject to a high standard of data protection".
Reding told delegates at the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington that she has drawn up a mandate to start negotiations with the US on an umbrella data protection agreement.
"The EU member states are currently discussing the fine print of this proposal, which I have put on the table, before the negotiations can officially start. I can assure you, colleague, that this will be done swiftly and that the green light will be given in the next coming weeks," Reding said.
Along with Franoise Le Bail, director-general of the newly created EU justice department, Reding will be in Washington for exploratory talks with the US administration, including with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and the White House.
"I would like that this agreement should become the reference for personal data protection standards that apply whenever personal data needs to be transferred across the Atlantic for the purpose of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters," Reding added.
"In addition to providing legal certainty and a high level of protection, this will save us time and energy in the future because then, every future talk would be based on the umbrella agreement and could be taken very, very quickly, indeed, if the need to act quickly appears and it might appear in the future."
While Reding spoke of a "new era of trust between the United States and Europe", she warned that it is not always simple to agree on data protection standards.
However, she stressed that a proactive approach will be adopted this time around.
"What we are doing in the next coming weeks and months will become a gold standard. And it should set the tone for the rest of the world," she added.
The comments came after the European Parliament approved the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, granting US anti-terrorism investigators permission to look at bank data from EU countries.
The same parliament had voted against a similar deal in February this year.
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