Brussels, 04/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - As the signing process of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) got under way in Japan on 1 October, a new study commissioned by the Green/EFA Group in the European Parliament (EP) claims the text is not compatible with European law in terms of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Storm clouds are further looming for the ACTA, an agreement negotiated outside the WTO and in the greatest secrecy between 2007 and 2010 by the governments of 37 countries - Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, the United States and the 27 member states of the EU - which aims to protect intellectual property from traditional counterfeiting (the case for clothing, medicines, etc) and from digital counterfeiting (such as illegal downloading) on the basis of harmonised international standards (see EUROPE 10257).
The text has now entered the long process, starting in Japan, of ratification by the signatory countries. It suffered a serious set-back in the Mexican senate in June (see EUROPE 10404), and is unlikely to find everything plain sailing in the EP, which will vote on approving the text in the coming months. The Greens in the Parliament, determined to have it withdrawn, want to refer the matter to the European Court of Justice, under powers conferred on the Parliament by the Lisbon Treaty.
The study, presented by German MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht on 4 October, was conducted by Professors Douwe Korff (London Metropolitan University) and Ian Brown (Oxford University). It finds that the ACTA is in breach of a number of fundamental rights. In particular, the multilateral treaty does not guarantee fair proceedings as required by Articles 6 and 47 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. “Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP holders, and unfairly against others, equally disproportionately interferes with a range of other fundamental rights, and provides for (or allows for) the determination of such rights in procedures that fail to allow for the taking into account of the different, competing interests, but rather stack all the weight at one end”, state the authors of the report.
“Encouraging 'cooperation' between internet providers and the content industry amounts to privatised policing, violating the rule of law and the right to fair judicial process. ACTA also allows for the monitoring of internet users without initial suspicion, the handing over of their personal data to rights holders on the basis of mere claims and the transfer of these data even to countries without adequate data protection, all of which is in clear conflict with legal guarantees of fundamental rights in the EU” argues Albrecht in a joint press release with French MEP Sandrine Bélier. Violations of the rights to a fair trial, to data protection and to privacy, of free access to information and the free dissemination of knowledge are make the ACTA incompatible with European human rights law, the Greens say. They call on the EP to veto the text and, at the very least, obtain the definitive opinion of the European Court of Justice. They also call on the Commission and Council to suspend all negotiations and to put an end to a process which, they say, shames the values of the EU.
The study is available on the Greens/EFA site: http://www.greens-efa.eu (EH/transl.rt)