== Raad jast op illegale wijze besluit softwarepatenten er door heen ==

Ante Wessels:

"Wat er gebeurd is kan helemaal niet. Ieder lid van de Raad heeft het recht om een B-item (discussiestuk) aan te vragen [1]. Denemarken is dit recht botweg geweigerd. 

Het politiek akkoord miste democratische legitimiteit, het gemeenschappelijke standpunt is ronduit illegaal."


[1] reglement van orde Raad van Ministers art 3.8 http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/nl/oj/dat/2004/l_106/l_10620040415nl00220045.pdf


== persbericht FFII ==


PRESS RELEASE FFII -- [ Europe / economy / ICT ]

========================================================================

Council Presidency "Adopts" Software Patent Agreement

========================================================================

7 March 2005 -- The Council Presidency today declared the software
agreement of 18 May 2004 to have been adopted, in violation of the
procedural rules and in spite of the evident lack of a qualified
majority of member states and the requests of several states to reopen
negotiations.

Report

  * Cyprus submitted a written declaration at the start of the Council
    session
  * Poland, Denmark, Portugal and others (not specified) asked for a B
    item (discussion point)
  * The Luxembourg presidency claimed this was not possible due to
    procedural reasons, and that this would have undermined the whole
    process -> it would stay on the list of A-items
  * Luxembourg then gave a long statement regarding how the EP still
    gets a chance in second reading, the importance of avoiding legal
    uncertainty etc.
  * Denmark said it was disappointed about this, but accepted and
    submitted a written declaration
  * Later on, the list of A items was accepted by the Council

Conclusion

  * Luxembourg negated the Council's [1]own Rules of Procedure, which
    state that a B-item (which is at the same time a request to remove
    an A item) can only be rejected by the a majority of the Council,
    and not just by the Presidency.
  * The objecting countries "forgot" to request removal of the A-item
    from the agenda. Rule 3.8 would have given any single country the
    right to have the A-item removed, because the Luxemburg presidency
    had failed to insert it more than 14 days earlier. It is difficult
    to believe that they were not aware of this possibility.
  * This is a very sad day for democracy, and casts a very dark shadow
    over the European Constitution, which will give the Council even
    more power.

Jonas Maebe, FFII Board Member, comments:

   It is absolutely unfathomable what happened today. I cannot see how
   the promoters of the European Constitution can still support it with
   a straight face. This event shows that something is clearly rotten
   in the city of Brussels at the Council building. Why on Earth do we
   still have the rules that state that national parliaments should be
   taken into account by the Council?

   Things would be much more easier if we scrapped all those rules and
   simply wrote down "The Council presidency and Commission can do
   together whatever they like". There's no need for those pesky
   democratically elected parliamentarians to interfere with the smooth
   decision making process of the Council, since its only goal appears
   to be to please big business and to produce as many texts as the
   sausage machine can bear.

   This is absolutely disgusting.


More News

  Coming up at http://wiki.ffii.org/Cons050307En
  Council press briefing:
    http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/misc/84021.pdf

Contact

  Dieter Van Uytvanck, dietvu@ffii.org, tel. +32 499 16 70 10
  Jonas Maebe, jmaebe@ffii.org, tel. +32 485 36 96 45
  Hartmut Pilch, phm@ffii.org, tel. +49 89 18979927

About FFII -- http://www.ffii.org

    The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a
    non-profit association registered in several European countries, 
which
    is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports
    the development of public information goods based on copyright, free
    competition, open standards. More than 500 members, 1,200 companies
    and 75,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice 
in
    public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual
    property) in data processing.
      _________________________________________________________________

References

[1] http://wiki.ffii.org/Cons0412En