The European Parliament has decided to continue their political scrutiny of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), with the intention of reaching a decision before summer. Today the Committee for International Trade decided not to ask the Court of Justice of the European Union if ACTA is compatible with the framework agreements.

- This is clearly a victory for those opposing ACTA , says Amelia Andersdotter, Pirate Party member of the European Parliament and responsible for the political process in the parliament's committee on Industry, Research and Energy. The parliament has already received many indications that ACTA is undesirable. The innovative information industries of Europe, not to mention the citizens of all the member states could not have made their skepticism clearer to their public representatives had they tried. The freedom of establishment, freedom of expression and access to medicines is at stake. This choice by the parliament to take the political and economical issues raised by the agreement seriously is very positive. Now we have shown that we are an institution capable and willing to mantle political responsibility, and capable and willing also of addressing the concerns of Europeans.

- Almost all debates on intellectual property miss the really pressing concerns of society, she says. The agreement was negotiated without the negotiators having a clear view over the problems that representatives of copyright and trademark dependent industries wanted to address. Some problems regarding intellectual property rights are actually very well mapped, of course. There is a lack of flexibility in the rights systems and the European Union based industries or libraries and archives suffer from badly harmonized exceptions and limitations. An ordinary internet user cannot go online without violating, even unwillingly, copyright. No remedies are presented to these problems in the treaty. In this area there are no proposals at all for international agreements or harmonization supported by the Commission or the member states.

The time-table currently in place for the ACTA procedure in the European Parliament indicates that there will be a final vote as early as in June 2012.

Länk till artikeln på MyNewsDesk. (Swedish)

Link to press release from the Greens/EFA. (English)