Vilnius, 04/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - The president of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite, confirmed on Thursday 4 July that two transatlantic working groups would be set up “as soon as possible” to clarify the scale of spying carried out by the US alongside negotiations on the EU-US trade agreement, due to begin on Monday 8 July.
The first group will consist of data protection experts (EU competence) and the second intelligence experts (remit of member states). A letter from the US minister for justice sent to the Lithuanian Presidency of the EU Council, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton and the European Commission has confirmed plans to set up these working groups.
Grybauskaite said that she hoped that the EU would successfully manage these two processes at the same time: the one on data protection and the other on the transatlantic trade agreement, “without endangering future negotiations with our partners on the free-trade agreement”. She added that the mandate for launching transatlantic trade negotiations is “already there and so far there have not been discussions on changing the mandate”. (LC/transl.fl)