EU and US officials, who held meetings on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels, agreed to hold the next meeting in September, Sergejus Tichomirovas, spokesman for the Lithuanian justice minister, told BNS.
"The first meeting of the EU-US working group took place on Monday and Tuesday and focused on data protection issues. It was agreed to continue active discussions. The next meeting is planned for September," he told BNS on Wednesday.
The Brussels meeting came after some European officials strongly reacted to reports that the US was engaged in large-scale online spying under the PRISM program and could also spy on EU institutions.
Uniting member states, the EU Council was represented at the meeting by Darius Žilys, head of the Lithuanian Justice Ministry's International Law Department.
Data protection is being also discussed by senior EU and US justice and interior affairs officials at a two-day meeting starting in Vilnius on Wednesday.
According to Tichomirovas, the meeting will review progress achieved during the ongoing EU-US talks on a data protection agreement.
"The talks have been going on for several years now. In 2010, the European Commission was given a negotiation mandate to negotiate with the US. So, this meeting will only review the progress of the talks on the agreement. The agreement is on data protection in the area of cooperation between the police and courts," the ministerial adviser said.
Last month, the United States confirmed the existence of secret online spying program PRISM after Edward Snowden, a former officer of the National Security Agency, revealed that the agency collected large amounts of data on users of Google, Facebook, Skype and other US companies.
Washington was also accused of having spied on EU and German institutions and officials.
