Internet has been part of our lives for quite a long time already, but our laws have not fully adapted yet to it. The last legislation related to electronic identification is the Directive on a Community framework for electronic signatures, from 1999. Technology has had 13 years to evolve and has left this directive out of date.

Den fjärde december förra året skrev Amelia ett öppet brev till EU-Kommissionens ordförande José Manuel Barroso om vikten av upphovsrättsreform i EU.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_bhGgQzefE

This week Amelia and the rest of MEPs are in Strasbourg for the plenary sessions. If you follow it even just a little, you might have heard several times the expressions ‘Amendment’ and ‘Compromise Amendment’. If you have wondered what they are, here you have the answer.

The application of EU law can be made through two different instruments:

Every year loads of European artistic works enter into the public domain, that is, the copyright protection granted to the work expires and the material becomes free for use (with or without attribution depending on jurisdiction). In 2013 te works from all over Europe passing into the public domain are works for which the author died in 1942 will enter into the public domain, except in Spain where the author must have died in 1932.

An ‘interest group’, most commonly known as ‘lobby’, is any organization or individual who develops activities with the aim of influencing the policy and decision-making processes in an institution. Among these activities it is included contacting MEPs and/or officials of the EU institutions; circulate communicating letters, information materials or position papers; organising events, meetings or promotional activities, etc.

Report: A parliamentary report is a document that formulates Parliament’s position about a specific topic. It contains amendments suggested by the committee who created it, and also explanations for them.

Rapporteur: Is the MEP who is in charge of preparing a report.

A delegation is created with the aim of maintaining relations and exchange information with parliaments in non-EU countries. Meetings between both parliaments are held once or twice a year, alternately in the EU and in the non-EU country that is in the delegation.

There are four types of delegation:

Last month, Amelia published an article in Research Media about Horizon 2020 and open access. The article is attached as a pdf to this post, and a brief part of it is published below.