"Citizens on both sides of the Atlantic need to be reassured that their data is protected and companies need to know existing agreements are respected and enforced," EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement.
"Today we put forward a clear agenda for how the US can work with the EU to rebuild trust," EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom added. "Everyone from internet users to authorities on both sides of the Atlantic stand to gain from cooperation."
Europeans have been outraged by documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which suggested that US intelligence services tapped into servers of leading internet companies and carried out mass spying on European citizens and politicians.
Some in privacy-conscious Europe have called for an aggressive reaction, such as the suspension of negotiations with Washington on a landmark, growth-boosting free trade deal.
But the European Commission, the EU's executive, said Wednesday that "standards of data protection will not be part of the ongoing negotiations" on the agreement.
It, however, called for action on other fronts, for instance finding that the "functioning" of the existing EU-US Safe Harbor data-sharing agreement is "deficient in several respects" and calling for remedies to be identified by the middle of next year.
The Safe Harbor system has been in place for more than a decade to allow companies to transfer data about EU citizens to the US.
The commission also called for talks on a new agreement about data exchanges for police and judicial purposes to be completed "swiftly." The EU and the US have been negotiating the deal for more than two years.
Additionally, the commission is calling for data requests submitted directly to companies to happen only under exceptional circumstances, and for EU citizens to enjoy the same data protection safeguards as their US counterparts.
"There is now a window of opportunity to rebuild trust which we expect our American partners to use," Reding noted.
(c) 2013 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)
