The EU expects tough talks with the United States on visa-free travel today, after Washington signed separate deals with some EU members instead of the bloc as a whole, Europe's top justice official said.
EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini and the bloc's Slovenian Presidency will try to iron out differences with US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, after tensions within the EU and with Washington over the visa deals.
Brussels has pressed for a blanket agreement for all EU countries not yet in the US visa waiver programme, but some of the bloc's new member states, eager for quick visa-free travel , broke ranks and agreed to forge ahead with individual pacts.
The United States wants deals with individual states.
"I expect a friendly discussion, but tough on substance, because we need to defend European values and principles," Mr Frattini told reporters in Brdo, Slovenia, the venue for the EU-US talks.
"It is tricky because our law requires bilateral talks... we are all in a bit of a very difficult situation"," a US said.
But today's meeting "will be an opportunity to discuss the unevenness of the EU and US law and how we find a way forward...in a way acceptable to everybody," the official said.
Washington signed separate deals with the Czech Republic, Estonia and Latvia, under which these new EU members agreed to enhanced cooperation on air security in return for the prospect of a swift entry to the visa waiver programme, undermining EU unity on the issue and angering a number of other EU states.
Hungary expects to sign a similar deal later this month.
Most EU states are already part of the US visa waiver programme, which allows people to travel without visas, but not 11 of the 12 mostly ex-communist countries that joined the bloc in 2004 and 2007, along with older member Greece.
EU diplomats agreed yesterday to defuse the intra-EU crisis on the issue by adopting a "twin-track" approach allowing both individual and EU talks, Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra said.