There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Not even in the European Parliament. But more often than not you can pay with your time instead of money here in the parliament.  The concept is easy: You get to eat, and the lobbyist get to lobby you while you're eating. If you choose wisely you'll not only get the lunch paid for you but you'll also end up spending your time being lobbied by the lobbyists you like. Perhaps even gain some insight or knowledge you didn't have before or make some connections that can come in handy in the future.

I spent my lunch today being lobbied by Health Action International Europe and Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue. In my book they're among the good lobbyists here in the parliament, and today they where holding a lunch debate on the topic "opening up medical research data for an ethical and efficient EU policy", graciously hosted by three MEPs: Christel Schaldemose (S&D), Peter Liese (EPP) and Margrete Auken (Greens/EFA).

HAI summarize the problem they aim to tackle in the following questions on their webpage:

Last Friday, 1st of June, Green Group hosted a conference of Green Press officers and Webmasters. As Amelia is part of the Green Group, I had an opportunity to attend and learn about how best to utilize new media to connect with people.

The first module in the morning was discussion on the blurring of lines between social and traditional media. First speaker was Duane Raymond, who has managed to make such a great use of social media that he runs his own agency fairsay.com, which helps organisations to make campaign count, especially in the digital sphere. Duane has experience with a wide range of campaigns organisations such as Greenpeace, Oxfam, WWF, Amnesty International. 

Second panellist was a veteran of EU correspondence and environmental journalism, Lorenzo Consoli, who was more of the sceptic towards the new media, admitted to only recently starting to use Twitter and no other social media. His lack of enthusiasm for new media was best showed by lack of response to my twitter message, which his name was tagged in.

Afterwards we proceeded onto the second module on the challenges of campaign communication, and ´Rising political forces - anti-establishment parties and movements´ which as name suggest was partially based on Pirate Party with particular emphasis given to the German example. The first part was on nuclear energy and green economy, which was very much the main topic for the green press officers and webmasters gathered inBrusselsfrom different green member countries. Set contributions were provided from Mari Kamaja, and Pavlina Pacakova.

Jag kommer att företa mig några resor under den närmsta tiden under vilka ni jättegärna får träffa mig eller organisera evenemang jag kan dyka upp på!

Torsdagen den 14 juni åker jag till Stockholm för att delta på EuroDIG 2012 organiserat av bland annat .SE-stiftelsen och IT-minister Anna-Karin Hatt. Jag anländer först sent på eftermiddagen eftersom jag behöver vara i Strasbourg och rösta fram tills ungefär 12:30 (demokratisk plikt). Jag kommer att befinna mig i Sverige fram till söndagen den 17 juni. Den 16 juni på eftermiddagen kommer jag dock att återvända till min hembygds värna vyer i Enköping, för att träffa familj och vänner, så vill man träffa mig i Stockholm får man gärna hojta till om någon av de andra dagarna. För närvarande verkar jag vara upptagen

15 juni, 11:30-13:00: EuroDIG, Workshop 8: Do we need net neutrality regulation in Europe?

15 juni, 14:30-16:00: EuroDIG, Plenary 6: Digital citizenship

16 juni, 10:00-11:00: New Media Summer School tillsammans med Youth for Exchange and Understanding.

16 juni, ~15:00 -- : privat tid.

Man kan också delta i EuroDIG-konferensen på avstånd genom att följa instruktionerna i föregående länk.

This is a list of Amelia's meetings in the coming week:

Monday

13-13:30 Interview with Europaportalen

14-15 Meeting of the Delegation for relations with the Korean Peninsula (DKOR)

15-17 Committee on Budgetary Control: Appointment of two Members of the European Court of Auditors: hearing of the candidates for membership

Tuesday

8:30-9 Breakfast Meeting at Sweden's permanent representation to the European Union: Department of Legal and Home Affairs

Wednesday

8:30-9:30 Breakfast meeting with Anders Wijkman, Swedish government-appointed special researcher for public procurement

11-11:30 ITRE coordination meeting

13-14 Coffee with MEP Marita Ulvskog

14-15 Shadow meeting on the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA)

Thursday

10-11:30 Technical Briefing on Union Trade Defense Instruments by the Commission

12-15 Roundtable discussion with NGOs and MEPs: Horizon 2020 for a more sustainable and fairer knowledge society

16-16:30 Meeting with representative of British Sky Broadcasting Group

Friday

10-10:30 Meeting with co-president and general secretary of the Green Group

I dagarna har mediarapporteringen kring avslagen mot ACTA från flera av parlamentets tunga utskott gått på högvarv. DN var tidigt ute och Europaportalen skrev lite mer ingående om händelseförloppet.

Två kommentarer: ACTA handlar, precis som UNT skriver om varumärkeförfalskning, inte om varuförfalskning, så som DN har skrivit. Jag tycker det är viktigt att vi håller isär upprätthållandet av varumärken som juridiska rättigheter, från de verktyg vi vill använda för att säkerställa konsumentskydd. Det är väl etablerat i juridisk doktrin (se t ex Ulf Bernitz bok Immaterialrätt och otillbörlig konkurrens där han för ett lite längre resonemang om varumärkesskydd i förhållande till konsumenträtt, eller varför inte det av parlamentet antagna Pharmacovigilance Directive från förra året där man helt frångått en varumärkesbaserad retorik för att istället ta tag i problemet med verifiering av butiksägare och spårande av legitima produkter). Begreppen varuförfalskning och varumärkesförfalskning kan visserligen delvis överlappa, men den sist nämnda kategorin innefattar inte t ex varor med rätt varumärke (eller fel varumärke) och fel innehåll eller egenskap. En varumärkeförfalskning skulle också kunna vara en fullgod produkt med alla egenskaper och kvaliteter som slutkonsumenten letar efter, men som är märkt av fel person eller företag.

Idag har Industriutskottet (ITRE), där Amelia är ledamot, röstat om ACTA. Amelia var föredragande för punkten, och hade föreslagit utskottet att rösta mot ACTA.

Industriutskottet valde att gå på Amelias linje, och röstade i förmiddags mot ACTA-avtalet.

Mer information, och uttalande från Amelia, finns i pressmedddelandet här.

Ytterligare ett utskott har röstat idag, utskottet för rättsliga frågor (JURI), som också röstade mot ACTA.

I eftermiddag röstar utskottet för medborgerliga fri- och rättigheter (LIBE) om ACTA-avtalet. Uppdatering: Nu har även LIBE röstat mot ACTA, således tre utskott på en dag som stakat ut samma riktning.

Inget är dock klart, förrän plenarsessionen där hela parlamentet röstar. Yttrandena från utskotten är endast rekommendationer till parlamentet. ACTA-omröstningen i parlamentet är planerad till början av juli.

Andra om detta:

Falkvinge: Three strikes against ACTA in European Parliament Today

DN: Acta-avtalet röstades ner

Europaportalen: Acta-avtalet föll i två utskott

On Tuesday, May 29, LIBE rapporteur Jan Philipp Albrecht, MEP of the Greens/EFA group, hosted a debate on the proposed Data Protection Regulation (downloadable here). Stakeholders from business to civil society and representatives of the EU institutions gathered in the vast Brussels plenary chamber of the EP to exchange their views and concerns on the future of data protection in the EU. The three panels treated in turn the scope and principles of the proposal, the data subject rights and the roles of Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) and Data Controllers. This report highlights some of the many issues brought forward by panelists and attending stakeholders alike.

Data Protection as a Fundamental Right

The first panel, consisting of Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Drunkenmöller, representative of the loyalty card system Payback and Joe McNamee of European Digital Rights organization EDRi, showed remarkable agreement that a regulation is indeed the best tool for addressing data protection on a European level. While Drunkenmöller emphasized the positive impact of a harmonized EU data protection regime for the expansion of businesses, McNamee welcomed the improvement of data protection implementation through the regulation. As he pointed out, data protection's inclusion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights constitutes a binding promise of the EU to its citizens to not just pay lip service to this right, but to effectively implement it in all member states.

The EP's committees are meeting in Brussels this week. Among other issues, the committees ITRE, LIBE and JURI will be voting on their opinions regarding ACTA. This is Amelia's schedule for the week:

Tuesday

15-17 Meeting at the Swedish representation to the European Union with, among others, the Swedish minister on EU affairs Birgitta Ohlsson

18-19:30 Debate on ACTA at the Institut d'études européennes of the ULB university (Brussels)

Wednesday

10-13 Attending panel discussion on EU regulation of fibre

13:30-15 ITRE working group

13:30-14:30 Meeting with Swedish interpreters

Thursday

9-10 Meeting on General Data Protection Regulation - first exchange of views and impact assessment

10-11:30 Technical briefing by the Directorate General for trade on Access of third-country goods and services to the Union’s internal market in public procurement and procedures supporting negotiations on access of Union goods and services to the public procurement markets of third countries

At the same time, the ITRE committee will be voting on Amelia's draft proposal on ACTA.

12:30-14:30 Event on cloud computing and new challenges for Data Protection, hosted by Privacy Platform in Cooperation with the Center for Democracy & Technology

15-15:30 Meeting with MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht & assistant on cybersecurity

17:30-18:30 Meeting with Eurocities representative

Friday

10-10:30 Interview with TV4

15-15:30 Coffee with representative from the Bellona Foundation

The Academy of European Law, ERA, hold on 24th and 25th May in Milan a conference called: Fighting cybercrime: between legislation and concrete action.

We attended the Friday session that enabled Google and Microsoft to show their good will to cooperate with the authorities to fight cybercrime, the latter showing initatives such as the use of photoDNA together with the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC), that allow ISPs to detect photos of child pornography and block them.

 A passionate prosecutor from Belgium explained in details his frustration not to be able to get any information from yahoo in the US to identify two IP addresses in a solving of a case, which showed the way to a rather broad consensus to increase international cooperation at Sate level and with private entities and increase law enforcement of criminal sanctions against cybercrime.

The question of the definition of cybercrime appeared quickly as a "topic ". Whereas several speakers of the conference refered to the definition of the Convention of the Council of Europe from 2001 and the notion of "serious crimes", particular attention was given to child pornography in the different presentations and seemed to appear as the referent example to illustrate security measures of infrastructure and legal action. Spam activities and infringement of intellectual property rights are also in the scope of cybercrime.