Friday 17 February 2012

ACTA coming up in the European Parliament (INTA)

Today, most of the documents for the 29 February 2012 meeting of the Committee on International Trade (INTA) of the European Parliament have now been posted online.

Among the documents we find (Agenda item No 23):

COUNCIL DECISION on the conclusion of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Mexican States, the Kingdom of Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Singapore, the Swiss Confederation and the United States of America
(Council document 12195/11)

The agenda and other documents relating to ACTA are still missing, so there is still no official information about what INTA may discuss or decide at the meeting.

However, the Legislative Observatory Oeil anticipates that David Martin MEP – already one of the most widely known with a dossier to prepare – would be formally appointed then. See procedure file 2011/0167(NLE) on ACTA.


ACTA workshop

On 1 March 2012 INTA arranges a workshop about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

If the workshop is open, it would add a nice touch if the programme contained information for prospective attendants and for those who might want to follow the proceedings online.

The bare ACTA text can be found here (Council document 12196/11).



Ralf Grahn
speaker on EU affairs, especially digital policy and law

P.S. 1: For better or for worse, between the global issues and the national level, the European Union shapes our digital future and online freedoms. More than 900 euroblogs are aggregated by multilingual Bloggingportal.eu. Is your blog already listed among them? Are you following the debates which matter for your future?

P.S. 2: The petition launched by @Avaaz for the European Parliament (and the national parliaments) to reject #ACTA has already been signed by 2,354,856 netizens, but more are welcome until the anti-piracy treaty has been officially buried.

2 comments:

  1. RE. "On 1 March 2012 INTA arranges a workshop about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. "

    From looking at the agenda, there seems to be no Question & Answer session, merely a talking-too. If that is the case, no point really in attending, merely viewing a video recording at lesure (via Youtube perhaps) would be easier & cheaper.

    I asked MEP David Martin:

    @davidmartinmep How can a member of the public (me, EU & UK citizen) apply to attend the public workshop on 1 March to discuss #ACTA ?

    He replied,
    @awbMaven Hearing is open to public. Will also be webstreamed on EP site

    (tweets on our Twitter timeline on 8th February).

    ReplyDelete
  2. @awbMaven

    Your additional points about openness are justified. A workshop implies some kind of interaction among all, not just lectures.

    The choice of speakers has also been discussed, in terms of "dominated by DG Trade".

    ReplyDelete

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