EU Dismisses Claims That U.S. Guilty Of Financial Spying

The move is an abrupt back-tracking from the warnings the European Commission made in July following the news leak that the United States had spied on Europeans and EU institutions, revelations which sparked widespread disquiet in Europe.Cecilia Malmstrom, Europe's commissioner for home affairs, said she had not found any proof of U.S. wrongdoing, neither in an agreement sharing passenger name records nor in an accord tracking international payments.

"I have received written assurances from the U.S. authorities that the agreement has not been breached and the consultations that we have done have not revealed any elements indicating a breach of the agreement, so we have decided to close these consultations. And we have informed the U.S. of this information yesterday evening, and I will inform the Parliament just this afternoon," Malmstrom said at a regular news conference.

The move is a setback for the European Parliament that called last month to suspend Washington's ability to track international payments due to suspicions that it trawled too deeply for information, abusing an agreement giving it limited access to the SWIFT database in Belgium.

Malmstrom said the Commission would not suspend the scheme, known in the U.S. as the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP), on the basis of articles relaying allegations by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden on EU surveillance by the United States.

"The Commission does not suspend an agreement with an international partner on the basis of two articles in the newspaper. However, we take very seriously the allegations. That is why I told theEuropean Parliament and the Americans, as well as journalists, that we will include a paragraph in the agreement that mentions a consultation can be launched if there is disagreement or a problem," Malmstrom said.

The EU shares data with the U.S. Treasury from SWIFT, which exchanges millions of messages on transactions across the world every day, but only on a limited basis to help intercept possible terrorism plots.

EU lawmakers worry the United States is covertly drawing extra information from the database following leaked U.S. documents aired by Globo, Brazil's biggest television network, indicating that the U.S. government has secretly tapped into SWIFT.

The United States denies any wrongdoing and the U.S. embassy to the European Union inBrussels welcomed the decision to uphold the data-sharing agreements, saying in a statement they reflected 'the breadth and depth of U.S.-EU cooperation.'

The spying allegations have complicated EU-U.S. ties at a delicate moment in transatlantic relations, when Brussels and Washington are negotiating a free-trade pact that would encompass almost half the world's economy.

The agreement is part of transatlantic cooperation following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.