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Dutch Parliament Reverses Software Patent Vote
Sanity writes "On May 18th, by a thin majority, the European Council of Ministers voted in favor of throwing out the European Parliament's efforts to keep software patents out of Europe. According to an FFII press release, the Dutch Parliament yesterday voted to change its Minister's vote, which was in favor, to an abstension. This is an unprecidented move and a great coup for those fighting against software patents, never before has a country reversed a vote in this manner. While this is not sufficient to reverse the decision of the Council of Ministers, it does pave the way for other countries, many of which were pressured into an affirmative vote, to do the same. Now is the time for citizens of the EU to put pressure on their national governments to follow the Dutch lead."
So they were for being against opposing patents. This is your brain on drugs.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
If they had changed their vote to a negative instead of just abstaining then it might have some influence, but the Dutch chose to act as if their man wasn't at the vote.
This won't make any difference the UK vote on patents although the Eurosceptics might enjoy the idea of putting a spanner in the works of the commision on other issues.
Please learn from our mistakes. Don't let stealth legislation ramrod you into 1984. It starts with patents and ends with your freedom. Don't let this opportunity slip by.
If you're a democracy, then you're a constituent, and your opinion matters, as long as it's heard. E-mail works good, but snail mail works better. Better than all of that, however, is a phone call.
I think the deal is that they have a "political vote", but the actual binding vote can only take place once the document has been translated into all EU languages. Historically the second vote has been a formality, but the big deal here is that the Dutch have demonstrated that if a Minister has voted against the wishes of their government in the Council, that vote can be changed.
This is not only good for software patents, but its also a step forward for accountability in the EU.
Our dutch political groups were (alomst) all oposed to the law.
The person who was going to vote is the leading person of one of our political groups (that group was oposed to the new law even more than most others)
He decided to vote in favor if the proposal would be changed to be a much nicer law.
The proposal was changed to some extend, but not as far as what he descussed and promised to the rest of his group and the other groups.
He voted in favor of the law, and everyone was stunned!
Things started to rumble as his own party was starting to ask questions.
A dutch digital freedom organisation made a propsition to the different party's to change the vote.
The voter replied that he would not change his vote as that could be harmfull to his party and carreer.
And now all of sudden, probably after more talking and lobying he did change, (or someone else made him)
The decision to originally vote for the software patents directive was based on incorrect information. When this was clear they changed their mind.
ffii
"The European Parliament's version asserted that patents would only be allowed for industrial inventions (e.g. washing machines) and would not be made possible for pure software. All these adaptations were removed in the Council of Ministers' controversial version.
Earlier, Brinkhorst described the Council proposal to the Dutch Parliament as a compromise with the EP. In recent legislative debates, Van Gennip was forced to admit that this was incorrect information, and attributed it to "an error in the word processor." "
-doh!
Note however that the vote was on "a political agreement on a common position of the Council", and that until this political agreement is formalised, no official vote has taken place yet. Of course, it's very much "not done" to change your stance after a political agreement has been reached, but there are no juridical hurdles which prevent you from doing that.
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The Inquirer: "A plan by the European Council of Ministers to force the continent wide adoption of the Directive on Software Patents suffered a blow yesterday when the Dutch Parliament ordered a minister to withdraw the country's support".
Groklaw says "The Dutch parliament is making news. It has just withdrawn its vote for the Directive on Software Patents. It's a proof-of-concept vote, you might say, the first time such a move has been taken in the history of the EU, demonstrating that other countries are free to do the same, as we reported on June 22.".
In Germany, Heise covers the story. In the Netherlands, the story is making headlines all over the place, lik e for example on webwereld and Tweakers.net.
This sudden change of direction is a long story, in which a classic case of desinformation of the Parliament triggered a whole process of debates and motions.
You are mistaken and ignoring a rather relevant fact.
The council of ministers IGNORED the explicit vote from the EU parliament in this matter. The minister did a bad job and the Dutch parliament told him so.
It means that something went really wrong. In our case, the Minister said to the Dutch Parliament that there was agreement between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which was absolutely not the case.
In our communications with politicians, it became clear that they had no idea what was going on. Because of the clear case of misinformation, we were able to get the attention of the Parliament, so we could inform them of the situation.
What was really important was that we had the European Parliament on our hand.
What hopefully happens now is that the Dutch decision triggers the attention in the other European Countries, so they start talking to their people in the European Parliament and to local representatives of the FFII and other organisations.
In case you're interested: read all about our efforts at: osnews.com
Typically the EU commission (the commission is the closest thing to a EU cabinet) will propose a new law. The proposal will be considered by the EU Parliament (elected by popular vote), which will issue an opinion. In this specific case the Parliaments opinion included a wide number of changes to prevent software patents.
After the parliament decides on their opinion, the Council of Ministers (ministers of the governments of the member states) vote. In this case the council decided to disregard parliaments opinion and their changes.
However, since it is usually impractical to make official translations to all the official languages, the council needs to vote again on the officially sanctioned translated texts. Only this vote is binding. This is what gave the Dutch a chance to force their minister to change the vote.
Once the Council has voted, the law goes to the EU Parliament for a second reading. If the Parliament approves the legislation or does nothing, the law goes to the Council which can then approve the law by qualified majority. Once so approved, it is the duty of the member states to change their national laws to be consistent with the EU law where needed.
If the parliament REJECTS the law with absolute majority, the council can still adopt the law, but only with unanimity. So if the parliament rejects this law with absolute majority on the second reading it's dead.
If the parliament amends the law with absolute majority, the changes go to the commission. If the commission accepts the changes, the council is authorised to approve the law with a qualified majority. If the commission rejects the changes, the council can only approve the law with unaminity.
In this case the commission is likely to reject any significant changes suggested by the parliament on the second reading, since it wanted the law in the first place.
So it's not as if this change would have automatically become law if the Dutch hadn't changed their mind - it was only about halfway through the process.