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European Parliament Declaring War Against ACTA
An anonymous reader writes "The European Parliament is preparing to take on ACTA. A joint resolution (DOC) has been tabled by the major EP parties that threatens to go to court unless things change. The EP is calling for public access to negotiation texts and rules out further confidential negotiations. Moreover, the EP wants a ban on imposing a three-strikes model, assurances that ACTA will not result in personal searches at the border, and an ACTA impact assessment on fundamental rights and data protection."
It's getting heated up in my country too. People are demanding answers from politicians, but even they don't know what the fuck is going on. ACTA is seriously the kind of secrecy movement that should not be allowed. It's good to see we actually have some backbone. My image towards EU has growth a lot with this.
A joint resolution has been tabled
Whose "tabled" is that? Is that "brought forward" or "set aside"?
I want my Cowboyneal
Having too much freedom for the people and too transparent a government is endangering the power of individual politicians as they can more easily be held accountable for their actions. This they do not like, and so they came to the conclusion that going back to secrecy and less freedom for the people is the way to go, as that would help secure their powers. Sucks monkeyballs, but that's what you get when you have people who think of themselves instead of the people they represent in power.
I'm a European. I'm not particularly proud that it took this bloody long for some common sense to throw a spanner in those works.
"Good news, everyone!"
Moderators please read the parent before modding up the grandparent. The grandparent starts well reflecting on national interests and then veers into total nonsense.
The EU parliament is waking up to a serious threat to democracies everywhere and this is a case for us to acknowledge them wearing pants.
stop being a self rightous cunt.
I'm pro EU.
I like the whole free trade and free movement.
Not everyone who thinks the EU is overly ineffecient and bureaucratic is a daily mail reader or even actually against the EU.
Not everyone who thinks the EU has had a long standing problem with corruption and lack of accountability is a daily mail reader or even actually against the EU.
Judging from your top level domain, you don't see the conflict in the first place. The EU system seems to be closely modelled on the French way of government, i.e. non-transparent decision making, the European School system for EU employee's kids (my sons are in one of these) are resembling the insane way the French conduct their education system, the EU hiring competitions (French as well) plus the insane and bureaucratic francophone administrators employed in the system.
Did you ever read the annual audit reports from the EU court of auditors? Left page: EU Court of Auditors: "We think the commission didn't provide enough documentation to show where billions of Euros went in agricultural support" EU commission response: "We don't see the problem....". The list goes on.
Incidentally, the previous EU commissioner of anti-corruption was implicated in a major corruption case in his home country.
Not to mention the lack of an investigation into the case of Antonio Quatraro. The EU commission prevented the Belgian police from investigating their premises for several hours after his death. Any investigation into this case has been obstructed by the commission and even the whistle blower from the EU court of Auditors, Douglas Watt, lives in hiding in fear of his life.
Understand that this culture of corruption is contrary to the customs in some other (typically northern) EU member countries.
But it isn't the British, its the rest of Europe. The British are to busy trying to bring about their Orwellian utopia to be teaching us much of anything. Right now England is pretty far behind even the US when it comes to freedom.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
until 1-2 years ago, lobbies of private interests ignored Eu parliament, because it held no power and it was a 'novelty' parliament. Pretty little parliament.
Lisbon treaty ended up giving powers to Eu parliament. Now, there is a powerful parliament, members of which were elected not through lobby support, but popular support and concerns.
right at the time they were trying to push acta to put a stranglehold on internet and emerging technologies and people's rights .... and there is not enough time to wait for reelection so that they can support their puppet representatives to power - not that they could easily though - europe is close to 1 billion people, and members get elected from all countries. its not something similar to dominating us houses or brit parliament...
funny how things turned out ...
Read radical news here
EU legislating beer glass sizes (making it smaller, of course...). Or EU legislating what a hot dog should be called. Or any of the thousands other equally pointless directives.
Don't forget Canada and New Zealand. The leaked ACTA docs show that they were standing up for rights and good law from the beginning.
As a proud Canadian that is very concerned about the continuing efforts of the current right-wing minority government to elbow this country away from democracy at every twist and turn, I cannot accept your compliment.
I can assure you that, based on the evidence to date, the so-called Canadian reps only tried to give the illusion of protecting the people's rights, while in fact doing no such thing, in keeping with the modus operandi of that minority government. In fact, they made little to no material objection to the meat of ACTA and commented only on superficialities.
New Zealand, on the other hand, appears to have represented the interests of its citizenry honourably and made material objections to the meat of ACTA. For that I commend New Zealand's government.