The European Parliament has given its support to Cecilia Malmström to become the next European commissioner for trade after she allayed concerns raised by an e-mail suggesting that a member of her team had worked with the United States to alter data-protection proposals from the European Commission.

The e-mail was published on Sunday (28 September) by a US-based organisation that said it had obtained the e-mail under a freedom-of-information request. The e-mail, written in 2012 by a US official, stated that a member of Malmström’s private office had “reached out” to US officials and that Malmström’s team had “concerns similar to those” of the US about an European Union data-protection proposal.

Malmström is currently the European commissioner for home affairs and is, therefore, one of the EU officials most closely engaged in discussions about data protection.

Click here to read the live blog of Malmström’s hearing – as it happened. 

Malmström faced a series of questions about the revelations during a Parliamentary hearing yesterday (29 September) to consider her nomination to serve as the European commissioner for trade.

Malmström, who said that she was “very, very upset” by the accusations, yesterday that suggestions that she had colluded with the US were based on “misunderstandings and lies”.

Her comments failed to satisfy Green and socialist members of the Parliament’s trade committee, who took the unusual step of demanding a formal vote by the full committee on Malmström’s nomination. The socialists also demanded that Malmström send a letter addressing concerns raised by the e-mail.

The committee’s 41 members today backed Malmström in two votes. Though the vote was secret, socialist members of the committee indicated that they had been satisfied by Malmström’s response.

Malmström said that “it is rather difficult to comment on the very unclear mail, which I saw for the first time yesterday”. She continued: “I did not reach out to the US on those issues” — the timetable for adoption of the data-protection proposals and possible clashes with law-enforcement agreements – and “nor did I instruct my officials to do so, and to my knowledge none of them did. Nor do I recall that I was approached by the US on those issues”.

She continued by clarifying her position on a series of issues raised by the data-protection proposals, which had been drawn up by Viviane Reding, the then-commissioner for fundamental rights.

Twenty seven of the committees 41 members said they viewed Malmström as upholding values that qualified her to be a European commissioner, with nine voting against and four abstaining.

A similar number – 26 – said she was qualified to serve as trade commissioner, with ten voting against and five abstaining.

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The opponents are believed to have been mainly from the Green and hard-left groups in the parliament.