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EU Software Patent Law Moves Forward
Zygfryd writes "Just when we were all celebrating, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reports that the Patent Directive is not likely to return to the first reading as the Commission may ignore the Parliament's vote on restarting the process. Revisions are said to be still possible, but under political pressure the Polish government stated they would no longer oppose the directive's adoption and support the former agreement made in May. Polish diplomats will, however, support any opposition initiated by other countries on the February 17 meeting." At the same time, drseuk writes "The Spanish Senate has just voted against Software Patents. This should hopefully require the Spanish EU representative to vote against any attempts by the Council of Ministers to ignore the will of the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee."
As a result, we're organising a demonstration next Tuesday in Brussels. Everyone's welcome!
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If the executive body can simply ignore the parliment, why does the parliment even exist?
The parliament does have some power. It can still vote this whole directive down, and there's at least a chance that it will if only out of anger at being ignored. I think it can dismiss the EU commission as well, though I doubt that's going to happen. It would be satsifying.
Who exactly are the ministers accountable to?
Their own national legislatures and electorates.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
All the power resides in the hands of comissars and the council. They, in turn, are career bureaucrats chosen - undemocratically, mind you - by the member states.
These companies claim to represent "the" European IT industry and that they need patents on "computer-implemented inventions" (which generally are pretty much the same as what would be called software patents in the US). In reality, SMEs represent a much larger part of the European economy (both IT and non-IT, and software patentability obviously goes much further than just IT), they are heavily opposed (see e.g. UEAPME and CEA-PME).
The larger companies are of course much better organised regarding lobbying, so it's mainly their voice which is heard at the top levels. Slowly, we are changing this though.
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Who are these bourgeois you're talking about? Do you know the definition of this word? I only see corrupted governments here.
No, because of Occam's razor. We have seen tons of lobbying documents from that club of companies. There was also a fax sent by the "Mission of the United States of America to the European Union", and of course there could be a lot of behind-the-scenes lobbying we don't know about, but I really doubt that the US government is a major reason for the fact that the Council and Commission are so stubborn.
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Japan, Australia already have software patents. AFAIK, India, New Zealand, most of Mercosur do not have them, though some laws are under discussion too (IN, NZ). Here you find a (somewhat Euro-biased) list of FFII regional groups, join and take the initiative (not all mailing lists are very active) Thanks.
Actually, the EU Council is made up of representatives of the 25 elected governments. The Parliament is directly elected by the people, the Commission is appointed by the governments, and the Council is the national governments. (ie : the Agriculture Council is made up of the Agriculture Ministers/Secretaries from each member state, and so on). The problem isn't that there are no democratic safeguards in the EU, the problem is that they're being ignored by the national governments.
Do you want to do something about this?
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http://ffii.org/money/account/index.en.html
The Register (19th May 2004). Google for more info.
"Spain voted against the directive and Belgium, Italy, Denmark and Austria all refused to support it. In previous negationations, Poland, Austria, Latvia and Germany had all expressed reservations."
Spain hasn't changed its mind. Spain already voted against software patents.
Brinkhorst is the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs. He's not a Minister of Agriculture and not an EU Commissioner, though he does seem to think he's God. The Dutch EU Comissioner is Neelie Kroes, and the previous Dutch Commissioner Frits Bolkestein was one of the big driving forces behind trying to make software patentable in the EU.
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This is actually a major reason why the EU council put software patents on the agenda of its Feb 17 meeting: in the morning, the German minister is not yet formally bound by the Bundestag decision.
I don't believe that these two events are directly related. The German representative (whoever that will be) is not bound by the decision of the Bundestag anyway.
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In Scotland the Liberal Democrats (heirs to the Liberal Party of yore) are in coalition with Labour, for example, and the main opposition is the Scottish National Party.
In Scotland, the Conservatives are mainly supported by voters who have good earnings and wish to keep their money (company directors, property owners). Labour are mainly supported by those with poor earnings (the benefits culture located in the inner cities). The Liberal Democrats are supported by professionals (educated to degree and above level, but not on a good salary yet) in the outer suburbs of the main cities. The SNP are supported by the rural population in the North and West of Scotland because they get fed of MP's imposing solutions on the inner-cities on the rest of the country (taxes on gasoline might be good way to reduce pollution in the inner city, but a complete vote loser where the nearest post office is 10 miles away).
There are also various Independent MP's, who are distributed all across the country.
Nobody has really forgiven the Conservatives for the Poll Tax, the merging of Scottish regiments to save English votes, and the teachers strike back in the mid 1980's. Not forgetting the way they covered up various disasters (Marchioness and Camelford).
This only leaves the Liberal-Democrats to oppose Labour, but since neither would get enough votes for a majority, they have actually formed an alliance. So there is massive voter apathy.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
What may from the outside world (and sometimes from the inside) look like a mess is the result of how the EU has developed.
At first (decades ago) the parliament was selected by the national governments and it was supposed to just monitor the decision making. The actual decision makers comprised the commision, whose members were selected by each local (national) government and whose main task was to propose Europe-wide legislation but to do so without consideration of local / national interests, and the council, which was the organization comprising the actual member governments and who had to approve any new legislative proposal.
With time it was decided that the members of the European Parliament should be directly elected by European citizens (which has now been the case for quite a long time). In addition, it has gained the power to sack the commision (though not individual members, only the entire group) in a vote of misconfidence should it want to. Meanwhile the EU as such has been expanded from a purely economic organization to a sort of quasi-government involved in all sorts of issues, including foreign policy, economic policy, environmental protection, labour issues, law enforcement, etc. The parliament has been granted more and more powers and actually has veto power over some, but not all, of the EU policy areas (in those that it lacks veto powers, it's supposed to have an advisory role).
At this point, an overview of the most important institutions might look like this:
1) European Commision. Members (one per country for small countries, two per country for large countries) selected by national governments and supposed to work for what is best for the EU as a whole. Members have to disavow strictly national interests and concerns. Has the role of proposing new legislation for Europe as a whole.
2) European Council. Comprises national governments and / or their diplomatic representatives. Concerned with the "national" interest. Has veto power over new legislation. In many policy areas a single country can stop an EU law, while in other areas a qualified majority (defined differently depending on policy area) is sufficient to pass any law. Small countries have more votes per person.
3) European Parliament. Directly elected by EU wide elections every five years. Organized in EU-wide political party groupings that correspond to the national political parties (for example, liberals, greens, conservatives, social democrats, communists, independants, etc). In some policy areas has veto power over new legislation. In other areas has merely advisory power. Small countries have a higher percentage of representatives per citizen (sort of like vote distribution in the council) to reduce the risk of large countries trampling all over small ones. Not unlike the vote distribution aspect of the US electoral college, I suppose.
4) European Court of Justice. Overrules national courts and is empowered with interpreting law and treaties / constitutional issues and resolving conflicts. Each country has exactly one judge although judges are of course expected to be legal professionals and not represent their nationality.
5) The European Ombudsman, tasked with investigating abuse by and within EU institutions.
What I think has happened with the patent issue, is that the Council members (i.e. national governments) have decided on their own to go ahead with the patent proposal, bypassing the other EU institutions and making it national law immediately (which would be subject to national parliaments, though). This may seem strange but if we remember that the council is just a collection of the national governments it sort of makes sense, they would be able to do this even if the EU didn't exist just like other groups of countries sometimes get together to form treaties and laws. It admittedly is a problem, though.
Ultimately what happens in the EU is something that national governments and EU parliamentarians have control of. Accountab
That's appearantly next Thursday, not Tuesday. Thursday the 17th of February, 2005. Mentioned just in case someone who won't be attending still wants to know...