Brussels, 01/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - Despite the assurances given by Karel De Gucht, Trade Commissioner, about the legitimacy of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that the Commission has referred to the EU Court of Justice for its verdict as to whether ACTA is compatible with fundamental rights, the wrangling in the European Parliament has not subsided. The first political debates began in Parliament this week.
De Gucht - not an attack on liberties. Pending the Court of Justice's opinion, Karel De Gucht again defended before Parliament, on Wednesday 29 February, the legitimacy of the plurilateral agreement sealed in 2010 between Australia, Canada, South Korea, the United States, Japan, Morocco, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the EU with a view to protecting intellectual property from traditional counterfeiting (clothes, medicines) and digital counterfeiting (illegal downloading), on the basis of harmonised international norms. “ACTA is not an attack on your liberties”, said De Gucht, promising before the international trade committee that it will not result in criminalising those who illegally download from the internet. “ACTA is a defence of your livelihoods. (…) ACTA is not about 'Big Brother'. ACTA is about solving our economic problems in 2012 and beyond”, De Gucht continued. There is no possibility of punitive action, he said, unless the activity were to be carried out on a “commercial scale”, such as sites like as Megaupload, but “not the tens of thousands of end-users worldwide”. ACTA aims to set up an overall system of intellectual property protection in Europe but “Europe will not need to make any change to our current legislation in order to comply with ACTA”, De Gucht stressed, reaffirming that the treaty will not lead to internet censure or restrict the trade in generic medicines.
Delaying tactics. At the far left of Parliament's political range, the leader of GUE/NGL, Helmut Scholz, spoke disparagingly of what he called the Commission's “delaying tactics” saying: “By referring ACTA to the EU Court of Justice, the Commission is trying to slow down the debate on the highly controversial agreement”. However, this will not change his group's support for the “broad alliance of those who are protesting about the dangers of ACTA”, he said. The German MEP hopes, however, to “transform the successful protest of the past months into a participatory democratic process”. In a letter to José Manuel Barroso, the Green leaders, Dany Cohn-Bendit and Rebecca Harms, called on the European executive to clarify the procedure and the timetable for ratification of ACTA and for referral to the Court of Justice. “While the Greens have long called for ACTA to be referred to the ECJ, there are serious concerns about the motives of the Commission's belated move”, explain the two Green co-leaders. They warn that “this referral must not be used to cynically stall the political process”. Finally, headed by Guy Verhofstadt and Niccolo Rinaldi, the Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) raise the question of whether the agreement will be binding or not. During their recent meeting in Washington with Ron Wyden, who is responsible for the dossier at the US Senate, the democrat representative maintained that the US government will not be seeking congressional consent for the agreement and that it is not clear that ACTA will be binding in the USA. The agreement, which is not said to have the approval of his peers, would probably be rejected in Senate, all the more as it is highly contested by civil society in North America. (EH/transl.jl)