ACTA

The Greens/ EFA group yesterday adopted an urgent appeal for transparency in the negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). With this action, the Greens/EFA protest against the decision by ACTA negotiators to keep a new version of the draft treaty secret after the 9th negotiation round concluded in Switzerland on 1 July. This decision clearly ignores the European Parliament's Resolution adopted by a grand majority in March 2010. The Resolution clearly carried an expectation of a continuous policy of transparency. But instead, there was a one-time release of a draft text in April designed as a piecemeal appeasement of the parliament, and then again after a complete lack of transparency. The Commission's flagrant disregard for the demands of the Parliament is completely unacceptable.

Commenting on the negotiations, Green MEP Eva Lichtenberger said:

"The negotiating parties have strategically chosen to take a step backwards on transparency at precisely the moment when it needed the most, with the aim of finalising the agreement even in the face of much resistance, critical expert opinion and public outrage. Many political groups in the Parliament gave up on safeguarding fundamental principles in the SWIFT agreement. With ACTA we must take the utmost care that we do not make the same mistakes again since the agreement can have far reaching consequences for democracy, rule of law, privacy and freedom of expression. We have to stick to European democratic traditions which demand transparency and dialogue with experts and civil society and so we will continue to insist on the release of the negotiation texts."

Commenting on how ACTA could negatively affect access to medicine, Green MEP Ska Keller said:

"The issue of access to medicines concerns people all over the world. To this day, the Commission has failed to prove that ACTA will have anything other than a negative impact in this regard. Therefore we demand an impact assessment that addresses the devastating critique of the agreement by developing countries, public health experts and NGOs in the health sector. Public access to the ACTA text is only a first step in ensuring that patients around the world are not harmed."

>>> See text of the appeal (pdf)

Note to Editors:

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a pluri-lateral agreement aimed at establishing effective enforcement of intellectual property rights.