EU Commission: CETA 'Totally Different From ACTA'

itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will remember the hullaballoo that arose yesterday over a leaked version of CETA containing key clauses that were 'nearly identical to ones found in ACTA.' Now the European Commission is saying you shouldn't believe every leak you see and that the 'language being negotiated on CETA regarding Internet is now totally different from ACTA.' Well, maybe with the exception of language that appears in both CETA and ACTA but didn't 'originate' in ACTA and therefore doesn't count."

Comments

European comisars

[boorack]

What a bunch of fucks. It seems that we won't get rid of attempts of pushing more or less fascist copyright regulation (with censorship attached) until we get rid of them.

Re:European comisars

[Spad]

Don't confuse the EU Parliament with the EU Commission; the former are elected and do a pretty decent job of being representative of their constituents, the latter are unelected and do a pretty decent job of being representative of anyone who pays for lunch.

Re:European comisars

[TheRaven64]

Don't fall into that trap. Who appoints them? I don't know

And there's the reason why it's not worth reading the rest of your post. Why not educate yourself? The European Commission is appointed by the European Council, which is comprised of the heads of state of the various members. The indirection between them and the people you elect is huge. In the UK, for example, you vote for a Member of Parliament (MP). The party with the most MPs selects the Prime Minister (modulo coalitions), who is then the UK representative in the European Council. He, along with the other members, is responsible for appointing the members of the European Commission. So, my influence on the Commission is that I vote for someone who may have a vote for the person that has a vote to appoint the person who is supposed to represent me. In contrast, I have 4 MEPs who are supposed to represent me, of whom one is someone I respect and who I can rely on to act in my interests and the others presumably act in the interests of other members of my constituency.

Re:European comisars

[henni16]

To quote wikipedia:

One of the 27 is the Commission President proposed by the European Council[..] and elected by the European Parliament.
The Council then appoints the other 26 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and then the 27 members as a single body are subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament.

So the parliament has an all-of-them-or-nobody right of approval for the whole commission whose members are picked by the heads of the member states' governments .

Re:European comisars

[lordholm]

This had maybe some point of truth to it in the 1970s when the EP was not directly elected. Most of the MEPs these days are pretty serious about what they do and becoming a MEP these days is not something that you get to become because you have been a politician for all your life.

Many MEPs are also fairly young career MEPs such as for example Fjellner, Alvaro and in 't Veld. They choose to become MEPs (or rather to try to be elected as MEPs) because they where seriously interested in the EP politics.

It is not 1970 anymore.

Re:well, now we show them that we protest in Europ

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be mistaking the EU for a democracy.... the European Commissioners are not elected but appointed and things have to get pretty extreme before they can be held accountable

Re:well, now we show them that we protest in Europ

[acidfast7]

I never said it was a democracy. However, when one looks up an EU Commissioner, the first three pieces of information are State, Party, and Name. When you don't vote for the party, the individual has no power. And, when you have 5-7 parties/country, each really wants to keep their percentage of votes, so they'll keep "their" Commissioner in line or face the consequences at the polls. A protest just gets the message across in a more rapid manner.

Re:So?

[Q-Hack!]

You mean lik SOPA?

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, they rejected the first one.

No, they most certainly did not. That was the European Parliament and not the Commission.

I don't recall the USA rejecting anything the MAFIAA has proposed to them.

That appears to be true, and is unfortunately also more or less true for the European Commission. It's quite sad, really, to put it (very) mildly.

Re:well, now we show them that we protest in Europ

[Anonymous Coward]

No no, this is completely wrong.
It does not matter how many votes the party has. The commissioner is in his/her seat and makes the decisions.
Each commissioner has a working field, so it is not that they are deciding together and outvoting eachother.

Commissioners are appointed in a "we from this country grant that country the commissioner for xxx when we can get the one for yyy" fashion,
and then internal to the country a suitable person is found in the circles of retired politicians.
These politicians usually have done everything during their political career to get the attention of big business.

Re:Didn't take long..

[sFurbo]

The European Parliament have been pretty stubborn about such things before, e.g. refusing to accept the entire commission because of one or two unacceptable elements.

Re:So?

[jez9999]

Are you kidding me? The problem with the EU Commission is that it's *too much* like the US government. You think the US 2-party system has ANY accountability to the voter whatsoever?