Belgian former prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the centre-right group in the European Parliament on Tuesday (July 2) said it would be 'stupid' to let media reports of U.S. spying on the bloc stop EU-US Free Trade Agreement negotiations.

"I said in the plenary that there are a number of fights we can hold on, a number of negotiations that we can hold on. But you don't hold on something that we want, that it's a little bit stupid idea," he said.

"I'm not naive about that, but say, it's happening everywhere spies and spying so it doesn't matter, sorry no, no, spies who are discovered matters. They are bad spies, at least," he said.

"In this inquiry two bodies can play a role, first of all Europol, we have a special new cybercrime unit that has been established in Europol, they can investigate. And a second investigation inquiry is the committee or the inquiry group within the LIBE committee (EP committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs) that started his (sic) work," he added.