Brussels, 04/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - After the meeting of the Conference of Presidents with Commissioner McCreevy on Thursday, President Borrell took pains to emphasis that the Parliament would have to draw its own conclusions from the Commission's rejection of its request to present a new proposed directive on the patentability of computer-generated inventions (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.8). In a letter to Josep Borrell, Giuseppe Gargani, president of the EP's committee on legal affairs, indicated that the parliamentary committee “intends to continue its work (…) and to extend its examination of the implications of Mr Barroso's answer”. Mr Gargani asked for “the opinion of the legal services to find out at precisely what point of the codecision procedure the European Commission may withdraw or modify its proposals”. The committee on legal affairs is to discuss this dossier in Strasbourg on 7 March.
The spokesperson for the Greens/EFA said on Friday that the inclusion of the directive in Points A (meaning without discussion) of the agenda of the Competitiveness Council of 7 March was a “risky operation”, because around ten Member States will struggle to formalise the political agreement of May 2004 on the patentability of software.