The Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) between the European Union, Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the US is currently the subject of much debate across the internet.
The European Parliament (EP) has a formal role in the eventual approval or rejection of this agreement. The negotiations concluded in November 2010, and each negotiating party is now in the process of ratifying and signing the agreement. In the EU this requires agreement from the Council of Ministers (made up of the 27 Member States) and the EP. This process is now due to begin this month in the EP where the International Trade committee will draft a report to recommend whether or not parliament should give its approval to the agreement.
In addition to its legislative role, Parliament monitored the negotiations throughout the 11 rounds and adopted resolutions highlighting our priorities to the Commission. I signed two Resolutions on ACTA which were adopted by the Parliament, the first in March 2010 - during the negotiations - and another in November 2010 - in response to the release of the draft text.
Labour MEPs proposed and successfully incorporated several points on transparency and civil liberties into the resolutions. Firstly we made it clear that the European Commission - as the EU's negotiator in ACTA - needed to put pressure on the other participants to open up the negotiations to public scrutiny through the publication of a draft negotiating text.
Secondly we stressed that ACTA must target only commercial and not individual counterfeiters. In our opinion the need to address serious counterfeiting should not lead to any erosion of civil liberties. In this regard I and other Labour MEPs object to any 'three strike' rule whereby internet service providers can suspend the internet connection of copyright infringers after two warnings. Equally my colleagues and I do not support so called border measures such as the searching by customs of travellers' iPods or laptops for illegally downloaded files.
Finally we stated that ACTA should not extend beyond the European Community 'acquis' or, in other words, no new intellectual property legislation should be created as a result. The European Union is a signatory to various international agreements on intellectual property such as the World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). It is important for the European Parliamentary Labour Party that ACTA is consistent with TRIPS and other existing Agreements on intellectual property.
You may be interested to read the full resolutions available here and here.
The final text of the agreement can be read here.
Thanks to the pressure from a high number of constituents, the European Parliament and the European Commission were successful in persuading other ACTA negotiating partners to release a consolidated negotiating text. While parliament continued to call for the further release of all negotiating texts with individual country positions, we were disappointed that further opening up of the negotiations could not be agreed by all negotiating parties.
Please be assured that the parliament's commitment to transparency also applies to our own internal procedures. Once the parliament analysis and discussions begin, debates and considerations of the text will be fully open to the public and streamed live on the European Parliament website.
My colleagues and I will analyse the text of the agreement very carefully before the European Parliament consent vote to ensure our priorities in civil liberties, intellectual property legislation and TRIPS compatibility are well-protected.