Me and the colleagues are voting on those legislative files which will create the next European research framework program, Horizon 2020. It is five or six legislative files, all of which regulate different aspects of European research and strive for excellence. The parliament has had very extensive discussions this year on open access (to research publications or to research data) and open innovation.

Now, most of our discussions have been very productive. The industry and research committe, ITRE, has been considerably more careful than I would have liked with respect to open acess to data, and the majorities have not been in favour of strong transparency requirements for entities dealing with public money and intellectual property rights, but rather optional or preferred transparency mechanisms. Still, in the end most of the committee reports decided not to stop any ongoing trials for open access to data, and to endorse the open access to publications.

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

• Regulations: They are the fastest form of EU law, in the moment they are approved they become immediately enforceable in every member state. Regulations self-executing, this means that national governments do not need to take any action to implement them. In this way, European institutions can be sure that legislation is uniformly applied everywhere in the Union.
• Directives: They are legislative acts of the EU that establish a particular result to be achieved by member states and a deadline to do so. The difference with the regulation is that in this case countries are free to decide how to attain this. With this kind of laws, the peculiarity of every country is taken into account.

This week will be full of committee meetings, so Amelia and the whole office will have to work extensively on them. However, this does not mean that they will be the only duties that Amelia will have during this week. You can see her schedule here:

Monday
10:30 – 13:00 Workshop on Broadband for all: The role of governments and operators.
13:30 – 14:30 Office meeting
14:00 – 15:00 Green ITRE Working Group
15:00 – 17:00 INTA meeting

Tuesday
09:00 – 12:30 INTA meeting and votes
14:30 – 18:00 Fixed Line Track
21:30 – 22:00 Speech at ENISA event

Wednesday
09:00 – 12:30 ITRE votes
15:00 – 17:00 ITRE meeting
17:00 – 17:45 Meeting with the University of Mälardalen
19:30 – 20:30 Creating New Infrastructure and a New Mode of Functioning for a True Knowledge Economy in Europe

Thursday

10:00 – 11:30 ITRE votes

 

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. Some examples of authors that entered into the public domain in 2011 in most European countries can be found here, and include Mikhail Bulgakov, Selma Lagerlöf and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We are investigating the opportunities of organising an event at the European Parliament celebrating the new entrants into the public domain. To do this, we must however first locate works from all the member states that enter into the public domain. Preferably from many authors, musicians and film makers. And we need your help!

If you know an author, musician, film-maker or other kind of creator whose work will come into the public domain in 2013, please put their name and some works in the comments. We will maintain an updated list of all the works we accumulate in this blogpost. It appears the challenge will be to find not only the authors but also suitable works for a reading - our office can only manage so many of all the 23 official languages of the European Union so if you can provide any help please put in the comments!

The European Parliament has just adopted a resolution (version subject to technical modifications) to which Amelia and the Pirate Party played a central contribution, that underlines the importance for the EU and its Member States to preserve a free and open internet as a condition for democracy and social inclusion.

This resolution was needed in the context of the reforms of the International Telecommunication Regulations that will be discussed and voted by the UN International Telecommunications Union (the ITU, where all the 27 EU countries take part) at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in early December in Dubaï. 

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.

Even if when one usually thinks about a lobbyist we mostly have in mind somebody representing the interests of a private company, there are many other kinds of interest groups such as:

• Professional consultancies
• Law firms
• Self-employed consultants
• Companies & groups
• Trade, business & professional associations
• Trade unions
• Non-governmental organisations, platforms and networks
• Think tanks and research institutions
• Academic institutions
• Organisations representing churches and religious communities
• Organisations representing local, regional and municipal authorities, other public or mixed entities

The European Parliament and the European Commission offers a Transparency Register, where all interest groups are expected to submit some information about them such as number of employees and number of workers destined to policy advocating, budget designed to lobbying activities, information about the company…