Brussels, 28/06/2010 (Agence Europe) -The ninth sitting of multinational talks (28 June to 2 July 2010) started in Lucerne, Switzerland on Monday 28 June for the controversial anti-counterfeiting agreement (ACTA). Pressure is growing on the countries involved (Australia, Canada, South Korea, the United States, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the EU) despite their wide attempts at transparency (publishing the consolidated negotiating text on 21 April, for example, after the eighth sitting of talks in Wellington, New Zealand, a week before (see EUROPE 10120 and 10123).
Meeting at the American University Washington College of Law on 16-18 June 2010, at the invitation of the American university's Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) to analyse the official text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), an expert panel comprising more than 90 academics, practitioners and representatives of public bodies published a petition in a press release signed by a dozen MEPs Kader Arif (S&D France), Jan Philipp Albrecht (S&D Germany), Sandrine Bélier and Karima Delli (S&D France), Christian Engström (S&D Sweden), Heidi Hautala (S&D Finland), Yannick Jadot (S&D France), Franziska Keller (S&D Gremany), Eva Lichtenberger (S&D Austria), Judith Sargentini (S&D The Netherlands), Carl Schlyter (S&D Sweden ) and Oriol Junqueras Vies (Greens/ EFA, Spain) and more than 640 civil society groups from around the world pointing out that ACTA is a danger to public interest in many areas.
The declaration warns: “We find that the terms of the publicly released draft of ACTA threaten numerous public interests, including every concern specifically disclaimed by negotiators. Negotiators claim ACTA will not interfere with citizens' fundamental rights and liberties; it will. They claim ACTA is consistent with the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS); it is not. They claim ACTA will not increase border searches or interfere with cross-border transit of legitimate generic medicines; it will. And they claim that ACTA does not require 'graduated response' disconnections of people from the internet; however, the agreement strongly encourages such policies. ACTA is the predictably deficient product of a deeply flawed process. What started as a relatively simple proposal to coordinate customs enforcement has transformed into a sweeping and complex new international intellectual property and internet regulation with grave consequences for the global economy and governments' ability to promote and protect the public interest... Any agreement of this scope and consequence must be based on a broad and meaningful consultative process, in public, on the record and with open on-going access to proposed negotiating text, and must reflect a full range of public interest concerns. As detailed below, this text fails to meet these standards....ACTA is hostile to the public interest in at least seven critical areas of global public policy: fundamental rights and freedoms; internet governance; access to medicines; scope and nature of intellectual property law; international trade; international law and institutions; and democratic process.” The statement can be found at: http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/go/acta-communique (E.H./transl.fl)