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Europe Rejects ACTA
21 August 2012
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) suffered a serious blow on July 4, when the European Parliament rejected the agreement by a vote of 39 in favour, 478 against and 165 abstaining. As a result, the agreement will not enter into force in the European Union.
The vote against ACTA is seen as a setback in the battle against counterfeit and pirated music, movies,
pharmaceuticals, fashion and other intellectual property-intensive products.
ACTA aimed to more effectively enforce intellectual property rights on an international level. While many
developed countries worry that their economies suffer great damage due to counterfeiting and piracy, opponents were concerned that ACTA would have favoured large companies’ interests at the expense of citizens’ rights.
The agreement was signed on October 1, 2011, by Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South
Korea, US, Canada and Morocco. They were joined on January 26, 2012, in Tokyo by representatives of 22 EU member states. However, the signatures need to be followed by ratification for ACTA to enter into force. Ratification by six parties to the negotiations is sufficient for the agreement to come into force; none of the parties have yet ratified the agreement.
David Martin, a member of the European Parliament from Scotland, pronounced the agreement dead. “No
emergency surgery, no transplant, no long period of recuperation is going to save ACTA,” Martin said. “It’s time to give it its last rites. It’s time to allow its friends to mourn and for the rest of us to get on with our lives.”
The European Commission referred ACTA to the European Court of Justice in May for a ruling on the agreement and asked Parliament to wait for its conclusions. However, Parliament decided to press ahead with its own scrutiny of the agreement. Five committees came out against the agreement while the petition committee received a petition against ACTA signed by nearly 3 million people.
EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement that he pressed his plan to have the ECJ determine whether the agreement, as currently written, would curtail any fundamental European rights and would rely on that opinion in determining his next move.
“It’s clear that the question of protecting intellectual property does need to be addressed on a global scale
– for business, the creative industries, whether in Europe or our partner countries,” De Gucht said. “With the rejection of ACTA, the need to protect the backbone of Europe’s economy across the globe: our innovation, our creativity, our ideas – our intellectual property – does not disappear.”
