Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)
Centre-right MEPs write blank cheque on ACTA; vote threatens civil liberties in EU
The European Parliament today adopted a resolution on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which was finalised last week. Green MEPs criticised the resolution, which was passed by a narrow centre-right majority, as ignoring the real concerns with ACTA. After the vote, Green civil liberties expert Jan Philipp Albrecht (Germany) said:
"This resolution is a blank cheque for the Commission. It ignores the concerns that have been consistently voiced over the past weeks by experts and Members of Parliament that ACTA could impair civil liberties and the access to information and medicines. ACTA urgently needs improvement in the area of copyright and patent enforcement. The Greens will continue to demand legal clarification from the European Court of Justice. We have submitted a motion to this effect in the EP's legal affairs committee."
Austrian Green and member of the EP legal affairs committee Eva Lichtenberger added:
"Worst of all, the resolution does not even demand an impact assessment from the Commission to check if ACTA is in line with current EU law and to what extent. This demand by the Greens would have given MEPs the opportunity to judge the agreement on a factual basis. Blind trust towards the Commission has never been a good recipe. Moreover, it does not reflect the new role of the European Parliament under the Treaty of Lisbon. This is not the final word: a majority for the ACTA agreement in the final vote next year is thankfully not guaranteed, considering today's tight result."
