The European parliament approved on Thursday a bank data sharing scheme that the United States says is crucial to fight terrorism after securing safeguards to protect the privacy of Europeans.

The United States will again have access to the banking information from August 1 after European MPs voted 484-109 in favour of a new five-year deal that was signed by Brussels and Washington last week.

The new agreement is a victory for the parliament, which used powers it gained under the European Union's Lisbon Treaty to block an initial deal in February, barring Washington from seeing the bank data since then.

Michael Dodman, the charge d'affaires of the US mission to the EU, said the lack of an agreement had created a "security gap" and that the program was "very important to the security of the United States and Europe."

European MPs dropped their opposition to the program after the EU and the United States agreed on a set of measures to prevent intrusions into the privacy of Europeans.