[Gllug] European Parliament JURI Committee votes for restart with massive majority

[Sharon Kimble]

European Parliament JURI Committee votes for restart with massive majority

Brussels, 2 February 2005 - The Legal Affairs Committee of the European 
Parliament (JURI) has decided with a large majority to ask the Commission for 
a renewed referral of the software patents directive. With only two or three 
votes against and one abstention, the resolution had overwhelming support 
from the committee, and all-party backing.

The decision is a powerful statement from MEPs that the current Council text, 
and the logjam of concern it has caused, is simply not a sustainable way 
forward. It is now up to the Commission to submit a new, or the same, 
proposal to the Parliament. Parliament will then hold a new first reading, 
this time under the guidance of Michel Rocard MEP as rapporteur.

The European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Charles McCreevy, had in 
the morning assured the JURI Committee that the Council would finally adopt 
its beleaguered Common Position text. He announced that "the Luxembourg 
Presidency has now received written assurances concerning the re-instatement 
of this issue as an A point at a forthcoming Council". Given that A points 
are to be adopted without discussion, this left no possibilities for renewed 
negotiations in the Council. Consequently, the Parliament apparently decided 
that a restart was the best solution.

Michel Rocard MEP gave a very strong speech at the meeting with the 
Commissioner. Apart from noting several "inelegancies" by the Commission, 
such as not taking into account any of the Parliament's substantive 
amendments in its recommendation to the Council, he also took issue with the 
Dutch and German governments ignoring their respective parliaments, the Irish 
Presidency's sponsorship by Microsoft and the attempted ratifications of the 
political (dis)agreement at several fishery Council meetings.

He mentioned that at a meeting with the Polish government, the industry 
players confirmed that the Council text allowed pure software patents, and 
wondered how the Commission could continue claiming the reverse. He was also 
curious about how the Commission's perfectly tautological definition of the 
concept "technical" could help in any way to distinguish between what is 
patentable and what is not. Despite his own abstention when voting on the 
restart later that day, the fact that almost everyone else supported it is 
probably his personal achievement.

The Commissioner made clear that "any agreement will need to strike a fair 
balance between different interests", and that "a constructive dialogue 
between the Council and Parliament will be vital for an agreement". He does 
have the option to deny a new first reading. But given the strength of 
feeling in the Parliament and the concerns of so many member states in the 
Council, the Parliament request looks like the best way to achieve a clean 
way forward for this Directive that everyone has been looking for.

Comments

Jonas Maebe, board member of FFII:

    The Commissioner can jumpstart the constructive dialogue by submitting a 
new and more balanced proposal to the European Parliament this time. By 
taking into account the countless new facts that have surfaced since the 
start of this procedure in 2002, the Commission has a great opportunity to 
give the Lisbon strategy the incentives it needs to succeed.

Dieter Van Uytvanck, president FFII Belgium:

    We owe this victory for democracy to the members of the European 
parliament. Today they have shown once again that they really care about the 
concerns of the European citizens. And of course we would like to thank those 
as well. I'm sure that without their impressive support for an innovative 
climate that is freed of software patents, this step would not have been 
possible.

[Source - http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050202162302114]
-- 
 12:24:21 up 7 days,  4:10,  2 users,  load average: 1.32, 1.20, 1.13
A taste of linux http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/efever/index.html
efever http://www.efever.blogspot.com/
Fedora Core 3, KDE 3.3.2-1.2.3, OpenOffice 1.1.4
Registered Linux user 334501
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug