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On the 30 of november the commission opened a IPRED-questionnaire. To make it easier for citizens to respond to this questions, we here at my office have prepared a preliminary response guide. It will make it easier to understand when and why you should leave a response to the questions. It's however pretty general in its nature, as the commission almost always dismisses answers that are exactly the same.

You can find the survey here: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2012/intellectual-property-rights_en.htm

To participate in the survey, you must request a consultation link to be sent to you by email. This is done by providing your email to the Commission, they will then manually send the link to the survey to you. This means that you only can get a participation link during normal office hours. During the next week we will request many participation links, so it will be easier to get a link during the Christmas and New Years leave.

For general information about consultations refer to the text at the bottom of this article.

This is the last week of the parliamentary year. Amelia will go back to Sweden on Wednesday, but before that she has to arrange many before the end of the year, so her schedule for Monday and Tuesday is even more busy  than normally:

Monday
09:30 – 10:00 Discussion about the Hibernated Linux Desktop project
10:00 – 10:30 Interview with a Swiss radio
11:00 – 11:30 Interview with Belgian students
12:00 – 12:30 ENISA meeting European External Action Service/European Commission
13:30 – 14:00 Meeting with the European Association of Internet Services Providers
14:00 – 15:00 Green ITRE Working Group
14:45 – 15:30 Talk with the Swedish Young Pirates visitors group
15:30 – 19:00 INTA meeting

Tuesday
09:00 – 12:30 INTA meeting
09:00 – 10:30 ITRE votes
10:30 – 12:00 Strategy meeting with Jan Philipp Albrecht on the data protection regulation
12:30 – 14:00 ITRE Christmas lunch
15:00 – 16:30 INTA meeting
16:30 – 18:30 INTA Workshop: Towards a reform of the EU's Trade Defence Instruments (TDI) ?

Wednesday
Trip back to Sweden

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.

• An Amendment is a change in a concrete legislation proposed by a MEP or a political group.
• A Compromise Amendment is a change in a legislation agreed by two or several MEPs that had proposed amendments to the same paragraph of the legislation.

This week is Strasbourg week again, so Amelia will be in the French frontier city. As always, these weeks are full of meetings, plenaries until late in the evening, and many other activities. You can see the most relevant point of her schedule here:

Monday
16:00 – 17:00 Group Meeting
17:00 – 18:00 Meeting wih Jan Philipp ALBRECHT on Data Protection
21:00 – 23:30 Anniversary dinner of the Lisbon MEPs

Tuesday
17:00 – 18:00 Internet core group meeting
19:00 – 21:00 Green group meeting

Wednesday
11:00 – 12:00 Meeting with SVT news
18:00 – 20:00 Green group meeting

Thursday
10:00 – 11:00 Pirate delegation meeting

Friday
10:00 – 11:00 Meeting with SKL on Data Protection

This week is a very busy one, but we have been looking forward to it a lot as well. On Wednesday Amelia will have a bloggers day, she will host a breakfast meeting about opportunities and challenges for bloggers around the world and how to pass their message to politicians. Later on, she will also take part in the Bloggers for Democracy event, organised by her and other green MEP's. Also, she will go to Berlin on Friday for the European Young Leaders Meeting. If you want to know more about Amelia's week, you can take a look below:

Tuesday
09:00 – 11:00 PSI technical meeting
16:30 – 18:30 ENISA third trialogue
19:00 – 21:00 Meeting with Amelia's Swedish office

Wednesday
08:00 – 09:30 Breakfast event: Opportunities and challenges for bloggers around the world
12:00 – 13:30 Bloggers visitors group
15:00 – 18:30 Bloggers for Democracy event

Thursday
08:00 – 08:30 Workshop about liquid democracy
09:30 – 10:00 Meeting with the DG Connect Director of Institutional Connections
11:00 – 12:00 Preparatory meeting of the delegation to Korea
14:00 – 15:00 Making European copyright fit for purpose in the digital age
15:30 – 16:30 Meeting with Portuguese Liquid Democracy activists
17:30 – 19:30 Political party integrity in Europe
20:00 – 22:30 Meeting with the Brussels-based pirates

Friday
Whole day at the European Young Leaders Meeting in Berlin

 

 

Yesterday the committee for Industry, Research and Energy voted in favour of a proposal that should  make the information held by public administratrion in the Member States more accessible for citizens, including for their re-use by interested individuals and businesses.

It has potential for improving the efficiency of public information in the digital world, increase transparency and create new business opportunities. A big source of worry for us appreared in the beginning of the negotiations between the members of the European Parliament that was dealing with the file. They seemed to agree that the public information could be accessible under any format (under the wording "technology neutral"), which would have made possible proprietary formats to proliferate, putting public information under a "business lock" for its access and re-use and thus jeopardising the whole point of the text.

Amelia managed to convince them to whitdraw all the references to technology neutral and replace them by "open format", which will be eventually and where possible chosen for containing public sector information.

Open standards will be used "in so far as possible". The total amount charged by public bodies for the re-use of documents would be limited to the marginal costs inccured for their reproduction, provision and dissemination, which should in principle ensure charges close to zero.  However the conservative majority in the Industry committee managed through confusing and tricky wording to seriously limit in practice the implementation of the marginal costs.

The vote in plenary is foreseen at the beginning of next year.