Yesterday I was with a journalist for the better part of the before-lunch. He was from Norwegian TV2 and was, I suppose, quite nice, even if his idea about parading in front of the parliament with a pirate flag was slightly daft. If you are a journalist and you're reading this, please don't suggest such a thing.
Currently, I'm in the not-Mickey Mouse-bar with Erik Josefsson and David Hammerstein, talking about trade agreements. The current issues predominantly concern the ACTA agreement, but we also have other problems in the Europe: the EU/South Korea trade agreement is not yet approved by the European parliament. It will have to be before it enters into force.
I wrote a couple of days ago about Erik Josefsson's new findings about the agreement's containing virtually all enforcement provisions from IPRED1. What does that mean?
Well, if the EU is bound by an international agreement, we can't change our legislation. So they're asking the parliament to give up their right to change essentially bad legislation. The problem is, as well, that they're not only limiting the power to change legislation as such, but also prohibiting the change of specific provisions in directives. So that's more intrusive than normal trade agreements which would mainly concern, say, tariff policies. Tariff policies can, and are, changed all the time.
My plans for the rest of the day are visiting an ACTA meeting with Finnish MEPs at 16:30. At that same time I will try to be following the Nellie Kroes hearing which starts at the same hour via Twitter. Nellie Kroes has been a successful commissioner of competition earlier, but is now being transferred to DG Telecommunications (formerly led by Viviane Reding who is now commissioner of Justice). I am told that Kroes has been good with competition, but apparently not good enough to solve the huge problems with telecommunication market competition in Spain, the UK and Germany (and probably other member states, you can find out more in the annual reports from ECTA). As a telecommunications commissioner, we're expecting her to be basically for software patents, whichh is obviously not a good thing.
I will try to read more in the evening. This is something where I feel I'm always behind. Crafty people may help me with further telecommunications competition information, EU-Generic ACTA party bilateral agreements and consumer and customs policies.
A concrete achievement today will be the sending of an appeal to the Consilium about access to the document about European Commission concerns about US proposals for the ACTA treaty. If at all possible, I'll try to visit some of the MEPs that I need to get in touch with.
I heard yesterday that the parliament has struck an exceedingly bad deal about information exchange with the council from one of the group experts of the green group. With the Lisbon treaty, we have an opportunity to change such agreements, which is something the parliament will have to get to work with as soon as possible.
Also, I'm trying to get in hold of the group expert on social issues about a special interest group for poverty management.
I am now a trainee at Christian Engström's office, so that I can access the building without being accompanied by an ordinary employee. I still have to go through the security checks though.
The library here is fantastic! I am looking forward to exploring it further. I had a conversation with one of their employees about opening up the network infrastructure in the parliament and agricultural policies after I ran into him in G2 which is apparently not even close to D(x?) where the library is located. Luckily he could take me to the right location.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by teirdes: if the korea fta is up for recognition by the parliament next week and they approve it we're screwed. http://u.nu/4jcj4...
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