EU Parliament Resolution Signals Support For ACTA
November 24, 2010
| 8:55 AM
The European Parliament approved a resolution Wednesday signaling its willingness to support a controversial trade agreement aimed at boosting international cooperation in combating counterfeiting and piracy.
The resolution calls on the commission, the European Union's regulatory arm, to move forward with submitting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to the European Council and parliament for a vote while stressing that the agreement "requires parliament's consent and, possibly, ratification by the member states in order to come into force."
The parliament called on the commission "to confirm that ACTA's implementation will have no impact on fundamental rights and data protection, on the ongoing EU efforts to harmonize intellectual property rights enforcement measures, or on e-commerce," according to a parliament news release.
Despite releasing a finalized text of the agreement last week, lower-level officials with the ACTA negotiating countries will meet next week in Sydney for a "legal scrub" of the document. The parliament's resolution reminded the commission that it must consult with the parliament before accepting or proposing any amendment to the current ACTA text.
The parliament has voiced concern with the process used to negotiate the trade agreement and an earlier resolution called for more transparency.
The lastest resolution outlined specific concerns with the ACTA text released last week, including with the section related to the Internet. For example, the lengthy resolution voices concern with "the very broad definition of acts of 'commercial scale,'" along with an obligation to improve criminal sanctions against Internet piracy. The resolution said these provisions "may encourage parties to the agreement to adopt legislation which will in practice lead to the criminalization of private users and intermediaries."
Despite this, the Paris-based Internet civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net said it was disappointed by the parliament's move. "All citizens concerned with democratic law making, the preservation of the online ecosystem, freedom of speech, privacy and access to medicines should work with their elected representatives to make sure that the European Parliament does not give its assent to ACTA," the group's spokesman Jérémie Zimmermann said in a statement.
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