Vera Jourova, European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality | EPA/PATRICK SEEGER ‘We were not ready for this’ The European obsession with data privacy is about to run headlong into the demands of national security.

WASHINGTON — In between meetings with U.S. officials last weekend, Vĕra Jourová, the European Union's justice commissioner and chief data privacy negotiator, had a few hours of down time, so she popped over to Washington's tony Georgetown neighborhood to do some shopping. The quick shopping excursion gave her a new understanding of the U.S.-EU divide when it comes to data privacy — and pointed to how difficult the security-versus-privacy debate is set to become in Europe in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks.

"They asked me to tell them my name and I asked why do you need it? They said it's just for registration," she told POLITICO with a laugh. "I tried to negotiate my right to privacy. And through this I made a conclusion that here in America people are less sensitive" about the privacy of their data.

It was the 51-year-old Czech lawyer's first time in America — she's here to negotiate a new U.S.-EU "safe harbor" data transfer pact after Europe's highest court struck down the old one last month amid widespread public concern that U.S. intelligence services are using corporations to get access to Europeans' personal data.

The European obsession with data privacy is about to run headlong into the demands of national security — and Jourová knows it.

The November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, which French investigators say was carried out by members of ISIS, have already spurred for calls for a shift in Europe towards less privacy and expanded government capacity to break through commercial encryption when needed.

"Here we have a pure moment where the conflict appears," she said in an interview at the European Union delegation building in downtown Washington on November 16, noting that the coming debate will "for sure" provoke public debate.

She adds that she and her colleagues had been in a conference room discussing law enforcement cooperation with American officials November 13 as the attacks began in Paris. And she notes that according to some reports, "signals intelligence didn't catch [the French terror plot] because the information was encrypted, as far as I understand."

"We were not ready for this," Jourová added quietly. "You can never be ready for this."

As a commissioner charged with safeguarding the personal privacy and civil liberties that most Europeans claim as a near-sacred right, Jourová's visit comes at a critical time. The European Court of Justice's invalidation of the safe harbor pact, which governed the transatlantic flow of data between corporations and allowed U.S. companies to self-certify that they met EU encryption standards, has caused widespread legal uncertainty in the business community.

Negotiations over updating the 15-year-old agreement had already been contentious before the court's decision, given European public concerns about NSA access to corporate data. There is also broader disconnect between the way that Americans and Europeans view data privacy. Americans tend to be more forgiving of corporate data gathering, and given that U.S. companies dominate the EU market right now, that's a sore spot.

Jourová told The Wall Street Journal last week that she had "complained about the way they negotiated" to U.S. officials. And since the court ruling, U.S. and EU officials have struggled to see eye-to-eye on the reasons for behind it — and the best way to deal with it.

Separately, the U.S. and the European Union recently inked a tentative "umbrella" agreement governing the flow of law enforcement data between the United States and the European Union. This week, Jourová has been using her first U.S. visit to lobby U.S. senators to make good on a promise to approve House-passed "Judicial Redress" legislation that would give European citizens recourse in U.S. courts if their data is mishandled by U.S. law enforcement authorities. Without enactment, the umbrella deal won't take effect — hardly a good outcome in the wake of the attacks.

She met with Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, on Monday, and was meeting with Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, on Tuesday.

While she's been negotiating with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker for months over the safe harbor deal, it's unlikely that U.S. officials know much of Jourová's dramatic back story.

A native of Trebic in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic, she worked in local government after university before moving up the political ladder, moving to Prague and becoming the deputy minister for regional development, where she helped manage EU funding to the country. But in 2006 she was accused of accepting a bribe and arrested, and spent 33 days in jail, in pre-trial detention. She was released and worked to clear her name. In 2008, the police relented, admitting the charges had been groundless.

After starting her own consultancy, she was soon able to re-start her government career, joining the anti-establishment movement ANO and becoming deputy leader. She soon became Minister for Regional Development in Bohuslav Sobotka's government, and was nominated last year as the Czech Republic's representative on the European Commission.

Her portfolio is wide-ranging; she's been involved in a contentious battle over maternity leave policies in the European Union in recent months, as POLITICO Europe reported in August. And because of an unrelated bit of inside-EU intrigue, she has power over the issue of bonus caps for banking executives in the European Union.

It's the safe harbor dispute that is raising her transatlantic profile, however. Jourova said her meeting yesterday with Pritzker focused on the role that the Federal Trade Commission would play in the enforcement of a potential new U.S.-EU safe harbor agreement — and whether it will be acceptable to the individual data authorities in EU member states, which often view U.S. privacy standards as lax.

"We need to include in a stronger way the European data protection authorities in the enforcement" of a new agreement. Jourova said she has no doubt that the FTC is a capable regulator, "however, we must look at the specific needs that safe harbor brings and requires."

Government spying is a more complicated question in Europe; even though the Snowden revelations still rankle in many surveillance-averse countries like Germany, both the United Kingdom and France have increased state surveillance powers.

Asked whether the Paris attacks will change the tone of the privacy debate in Europe, Jourová said that "our national security bodies and their rights to access the data, and the limits they have — this is a question for the courts in the member states, which have a long tradition in defining where the limits are. If these horrible events will change the views of the courts, we will see."

Jourová says that implementation of the EU anti-money laundering directive could help in the right against terrorist groups, given that financial activity is "usually the first sign something is going to happen." She also wants more cooperation between police and prosecutors.

"This is one of the most difficult dilemmas — the right of privacy and the right of security," she said. "We are striving for the right balance — and especially after such events, this is more affected."

This article was first published on POLITICO Pro.