Back in Bruxells for the week of 17-21 September, a week dedicated to meetings in the Committees that Amelia is member of,  respectively INTA and ITRE.  In INTA, Amelia will present and support her opinion on the report on Digital Freedom Strategy in Foreign Policy, a issue that took a lot of work and effort during the last weeks. Also, as a full member of  ITRE,  she will participate in the discussions and votes of that committee. Some of that hard work is now reaching completion and  Amelia will have a busy week in Bruxelles:

Monday

10-11 Office meeting

15-18.30 INTA meeting

15-17.30 ITRE meeting

Tuesday

9-11.30 INTA meeting

9.30-12.30  ITRE meeting

10-11 INTA vote

12.30 - 14.30 Conference on investor protection

15-18.30 INTA meeting

15-18.30 ITRE meeting

Wednesday

9-12 Proposed timeframe for conference on PSI directive

14-15 INTA Monitoring Group for Russia

Thursday

12.30-14.30 INTA Monitoring Group for South Caucasus

I år har jag besökt inte mindre än två upplagor av Debian Day, en dag för att älska och fundera över vad Linux-distributionen Debian betyder just för dig, träffa andra människor som grubblar på samma sak, eller de utvecklare som hoppas att Debian bara har positiva konnotationer för dig och alla andra. Jag är och har aldrig varit någon hängiven Debian-användare. Jag är heller inte utvecklare. Mina konversationer med Debian-nätverket centrerade sig istället kring olika databaser (firebirddb någon?), bildhanteringsprogram (Blender) och lättanvända metoder att sätta upp en Ubuntu-baserad VPS (ProxMox).

Nu i helgen var det dags för ytterligare ett Brysselbesök för min del. Eftersom vi har en ny kollega på kontoret så behövdes det fotas och filmas lite inför höstens #exile6e episoder. Jag håller på och förbereder inför nya avsnitt av serien och försöker hitta nya intressanta saker att filma och belysa. Det kommer bli ytterligare besök senare i höst där jag bland annat kommer utbilda en av praktikanterna som kommer vara i kontoret i höst i att filma och dokumentera. För er som längtar efter nya avsnitt får ni vänta lite till, men vi är snart igång igen.

Även Piratpartiets styrelse var på besök här under helgen. De började med ett besök här på parlamentet och hade sedan styrelsemöte i vår externa lokal som ligger i närheten där de hållit hus hela helgen. Jag har varit på plats under delar av helgen och fotat och filmat dem lite, så ni kommer möta även dem i något avsnitt i höst. Här kommer bilderna på styrelsen.

The week of 10-14 September is dedicated to the Strasbourg session of the European Parliament. Amelia is there together with Julien Bencz and Ulf Pettersson, and their schedule looks like this:

Monday

16.00-17.00 Green Group meeting

17.00-23.00 European Parliament plenary

Tuesday

08.30-23.00 European Parliament plenary

16.00-18.00 Internet Core Group meeting

19.00-21.00 Green Group meeting

Wednesday

09.00-23.00 European Parliament plenary

18.00-20.00 Green Group meeting

Thursday

09.00-17.00 European Parliament plenary

10.00-11.00 Pirate delegation meeting

Friday

Back to Bruxelles, and weekly review meeting

With the fall of ACTA this spring those of us who want an open online environment have an opportunity to move forward our positions towards those that want to overly regulate the flow of communication online. One way of doing that is by constantly reminding people of what exactly was wrong with ACTA and why no similar legislation should be allowed to infest other trade agreements currently being negotiated by the commission.We should not let ACTA be seen as a single case of success, but rather as the turning point on how Europe conduct trade agreements with other parties.

Three Polish MEPs (ZALEWSKI, HANDZLIK & WAŁĘSA) moved in that direction after the ACTA vote by putting the following question to the commission:

Last week, Parliament rejected the ACTA agreement by a huge majority, thus sending out a very clear ‘no go’ signal regarding any such regulatory legislation.

In the short time that has passed since, we have already been alarmed by the prospect that several significant and heavily criticised parts of the ACTA agreement (i.e. general obligations on enforcement, damages, criminal sanctions, intermediary liability rules and border measures) are expected to ‘live on’ by being incorporated into CETA (the Canada/EU trade agreement) and, possibly, into other international agreements which the Commission plans to conclude in the near future.

Today the members of the Industry committee of the European Parliament voted their opinion on the completion of the digital singel market. For details see the draft here  and the tabled amendments here. This opinion will be taken into account by the Internal Market committee members, that will produce the final report on the subject.

The final report of the European Parliament will not be binding, which means that the content should not be implemented within the EU society, it is rather a short text that "reminds" to the other EU institutions (the Commission, the Council) and the national Member States what the European Parliament think on the topic and would like to be considered in future EU law. So basically, its only words, but words that can be used to justify and negotiate the orientation of future binding EU law :-)!

Globally, we are slightly satisfied with the amendments that were voted today, the compromises between the different political groups, where Amelia negotiated in the name of the Greens on this file, reached noticeable wordings on the need to increase trust of EU citizens on the internet: "[the European Parliament ] Recognises the need to create ways of enhancing citizens‘ trust and confidence in the online environment and to guarantee protection of personal data and privacy, freedom of expression and information including the removal of geographical, technical and organisational barriers in redress mechanisms;"

Hello everyone, my name is Ulf Pettersson and I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. As of a few days I have had the honor of working for Amelia here in Brussels. I have been hired with the job description of Policy Adviser and will be joining Mattias and Julien as part of Amelias staff, together with Christian who unfortunately will be with us only for a shorter period. I will mainly work with issues relating to international trade, mainly towards specific countries, one of which is Japan. Additionally I will work with copyright and intellectual property issues since I have previously taken an interest in the economics and politics of copyright.

I'm Swedish and have lived most of my life in Stockholm. I hold a B.A. in Political Science from Stockholm University and a Masters in Business and Economics from Uppsala University. My competence as an advisor stems mainly from this as well as having written two bachelors theses on copyright.

These and other investigations led me to the conclusion that copyright, as well as intellectual property in general, is in need of deep reforms. The ongoing mismanagement, repressiveness and catering to special interests in the field is simply astounding. So naturally I'm very excited to be joining Amelia and her great team here in Brussels.

Amelia har fått in en debattartikel i tidningen NyTeknik.
Tekniska problem ska lösas med teknik, inte med polisiära insatser. Cecilia Malmströms populistiska strävanden hotar ta kål på europeiska säkerhetsfunktioner som faktiskt fungerar, varnar Piratpartiets EU-parlamentariker Amelia Andersdotter.

Läs hela artikeln här: http://www.nyteknik.se/asikter/debatt/article3529846.ece