Is ACTA getting away from the point?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
“This is firstly an international trade issue”, says UK MEP Syed Kamall, “but this has been jumped on by others, and taken it away from this”.
Kamall, who defended the Parliament’s right to transparency in the International Trade Committee in February, told EU Reporter that this one issue now runs the risk of overshadowing the entire agreement.
Broadly, he said, the political groups were in agreement with one another, with slight variations over issues such as intellectual property rights. Transparency remains the key issue, but what degree of openness still has to be resolved.
“The Commission has said that it will not go beyond the aquis, which is good. They will give briefings, but not on every item of discussion”.
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) of which Kamall is a member, as well as the EPP, are inclined to accept the point of view that not everything should be released to Parliament if it might jeopardise an individual party’s diplomatic integrity.
There are some important issues the Parliament needs to know about, such as ‘the three strikes’ rule as well as whether this will lead to criminal sanctions against individuals, but overall, says Syed Kamall, a certain amount of confidentiality of negotiations should be respected.
“With transparency comes responsibility”, he says, “but some confidentiality on behalf of the Commission should be allowed”.
“This agreement is all about trade. ACTA has a particular impact on EU trade, and we shouldn’t forget that. But, at the same time, lets not have these kinds of negotiations going on in our name in the way they are”.
