(BRUSSELS) - The Czech Republic on Wednesday accepted the terms of an EU-US agreement on providing information on Europeans flying to the United States, a spokesman said, amid a rift over transatlantic data exchanges.

During a meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels "we found agreement on a common position and guidelines for future contacts with the US," Czech spokesman Jan Vytopil said in a statement.

"We agreed the information exchanged with the US on PNR (passenger name record) should be consistent with the EU-US PNR agreement," he added.

A bilateral Czech-US accord on security measures for flights, signed in Washington last month, had angered the European Commission, which negotiates on behalf of EU nations and is guardian of the bloc's treaties.

The bilateral deal was part of Prague's efforts to enter the US visa waiver programme, which would lift visa requirements for its citizens to travel to the United States.

The EU-US PNR pact allows the transfer of personal information about passengers flying from Europe to the United States for use in Washington's "war on terror".

But the Czech-US deal was thought to go beyond its terms, which allows 19 categories of data about people to be given to US authorities. The information can be kept for 15 years and shared with other law enforcement agencies.

Visa reciprocity between EU nations and outside countries is the jurisdiction of the commission, which struggled to strike the PNR agreement with Washington last June.

But the Czech decision to go it alone undercut the EU institution's bargaining power, and it was feared it would open the floodgates to other nations wanting to follow suit, most of them newer members from central Europe.

Without the visa waiver -- currently only enjoyed by 15 EU nations -- citizens are obliged to obtain visas even for a short stay in the US.

Wednesday's deal clarifies the situation ahead of an EU-US justice meeting in Slovenia on March 13 where visa-free travel and air security for the European Union as a whole will be on the agenda.

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