Amelia starts her week in Romania, meeting with people from the Romanian government about the electronic identification file. When she will be back in Brussels she will have a busy week full of events and meetings. During the weekend she will meet with Belgian pirates both in Namur and Antwerp. Take a look to her schedule here:

Monday

Romania

Tuesday

08:30 – 09:30 Meeting with the Swedish permanent representation
09:00 – 12:00 Event on “Guaranteeing competition and the open internet in Europe”
12:00 – 14:30 SAAB event: Security versus Privacy
15:00 – 16:00 Office meeting
16:00 – 16:30 Meeting with Scania
18:30 – 19:30 TTIP meeting

Wednesday

09:00 – 13:30 TTIP event 'Transatlantic Trade: Discussing the good, the bad and the ugly'
12:30 – 14:00 Shadow meeting on Collective Rights Management
18:00 – 19:00 Open Internet Bar

Thursday

11:00 – 12:00 Meeting with DG Enterprise on the Space Debris file
15:00 – 16:00 Meeting with Helene Lovegrove on eTEN, CEF and Europeana
15:00 – 17:30 ITRE hearing on cloud computing

Friday

11:00 – 11:30 Meeting with Philippe Pellé, from the European Commission, on payment services

Weekend

Meeting with Belgian pirates from Namur and Antwerp

Rumour has it that Amelia is building a Death Star. It is a very serious project, and because of that she has been appointed as the main rapporteur from the European Commission for a report on Space Surveillance and Tracking with regards to Space Debris.

Space Junk, also known formally as “Space Debris” are all man made objects in space that do no longer serve a function. They just float on 10 km/s around the orbit and heighten the risk of damaging to functional satellites and spacecrafts. There's a lot of junk up there, especially after the Chinese anti-satellite missile test in 2007 when the Chinese space agency controlled a collision of a Chinese satellite by a kinetic kill vehicle. This collision alone created more than 2,000 debris and raised the amount of debris significantly.

This week Amelia will have many meetings with the Permanent Representations of several countries on the eID dossier. This is also a Committee week, what means that Amelia will have plenty of INTA and ITRE meetings on several topics such as Collective Rights Management, Cloud Computing and many more that you can read below:

Monday

08:00 – 09:00 Press conference on data privacy at the Europe House of Stockholm
09:30 – 11:00 Panel debate on Data Protection from a Swedish Perspective at the Europe House of Stockholm
11:00 – 15:00 Trip to Brussels
15:00 – 18:30 Collective Rights Management debate in the INTA Committee
11:00 – 15:00 Meeting with the Permanent Representation of the Slovak Republic to the European Union on eID
17:00 – 18:00 Office meeting
18:30 – 19:30 Green INTA preparatory meeting

Tuesday

To this question many tried to answer, but maybe we're a bit closer after yesterday discussion organized by the Open Forum Europe named "Can we determine and restrict the location of our data in the Cloud, and when do we need to?".

The main topic of this discussion was centered on data protection at service providers based in the US. In the forum there was presented this study, which claims that the European concerns about the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) are exaggerated.

Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that, because on the other hand, independent privacy advocates, represented here by Caspar Bowden, warn that most of the safeguards apply on US citizens only, so the data from EU citizens is not really protected.

Probably that's the reason why many European companies hesitate to use cloud services outside of their home country. Will we see a positive change in legislature and a gain of trust any time soon?

This week Amelia is in Strasbourg for the monthly plenary session. As usually, Strasbourg weeks are intense and full of meetings. Late in the week, Amelia will travel to Stockholm for the Stockholm Internet Forum. You can see her schedule below:

Monday
15:00 – 16:00 Meeting with the .kids foundation
16:00 – 18:00 Green Group Meeting

Tuesday
10:00 – 11:00 Meeting with Nelly Kroes on Trans-European telecommunications networks
16:00 – 18:00 Internet Core Group Meeting
16:00 – 16:30 Meeting with Ms Pilar del Castillo Vera on eID
17:00 – 18:00 Meeting with the European Commission with a specific focus on delegated and implemented acts in the proposal for eIDAS Regulation.
19:00 – 21:00 Green Group Meeting

Wednesday
09:00 – 09:30 Meeting with the Danish Composers collective
09:30 – 11:30 First meeting of the new Green Working Group on the TTIP
Flight to Stockholm for the Stockholm Internet Forum

Thursday
Whole day at the Stockholm Internet Forum

I attach importance to personal impressions, they are subjective of course, but they are reality, non-said, subjective reality, and they are also probably feed by external, “wire-less” vibrations. You can feel in the air when an entity is alive also because of the waves it spreads all around, and sometimes you get its message. “Without words”.

The General Assembly of the German Pirate Party was a vibrant demonstration of collective vitality. Each attending person knew she/he was a living part (which means, considered as such by all the others) of a common political construction. What stroke me is the energy that came out from the well prepared and accepted confrontation of each one’s strong determination to do it right. And the good organisation of the event that has been already praised by my colleagues , where it was obvious everyone knew what he/she had to do and why, enabled to frame and project this energy towards a hopeful political future.

Around 300 proposals were debated and voted, on the party program for the next federal election in November, on the party fundamental program, its statutes, and position papers.

When the proposal was presented by a member on stage in front of the whole assembly, people who wanted to ask questions to the member registered and did so when reaching the mike after they queued along a “question” line. Those who wanted to speak for or against the proposal also took the floor to support or challenge the proposal vis-à-vis the member on stage and the audience along a “pro” or “contra” line. And then came the vote...

Most debates went easy-peasy, Some were electric; but the chairperson was always there to make sure misbehaviours were avoided, and they were. Basis democracy was indeed a reality during these three days.