A new blog from a eurocrat inside the Commission

A new blog - Eurocrat=European+Technocrat - has entered the scene, promising to give inside views from the Commission.

Looking forward to all these little details that we don't get elsewhere...!

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA): EU Council work - updated

Next Tuesday (10 February 2009), the EU Council Working Party on Intellectual Property has the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on its agenda.

According to the agenda of the meeting, the Civil enforcement chapter and the Internet provisions of this international agreement for a more rigid protection of intellectual property will be presented by the Commission and discussed by the member state representatives.

As usual, these discussions take place behind closed doors, so we will not get any details before everything will have been dealt with by diplomats and bureaucrats.

And by the way: The responsible administrator in the EU Council is Leonidas KARAMOUNTZOS, who seems to working in the field of intellectual property inside the EU institutions for quite some time: If you google his name, you will find documents that show that he is at least 10 years in this field.

I am not sure that such a sensitive area with raising attention should be covered such a long time by the same bureaucrat... it sounds like an invitation for lobbyists!

Update (14 April 2009): The negotiation documents of the ACTA negotiations have been leaked (via Netzpolitik)).

Member states vs. EU Commission on transparency and access to documents - updated

According to EUobserver, member states, and especially Finland and Sweden, are fighting against an EU Commission proposal that aims at reforming the public access to EU documents.

The Finnish Minister for EU affairs, Astrid Thors, is quoted (update: full speech, via Wobbing Europe):

"Our interpretation is that the commission proposes to exclude certain documents, such as documents related to the commission's own inspections. [...] The justification for this exclusion is that it would ease the workload of the commission, releasing them from the duty of assessing the documents one by one. But on the contrary, we believe that considering documents one by one is a cornerstone of this legislation. What we may lose in the end with a little bit more work, we win by having a good and sound administration"

In the Green Paper "Public Access to Documents held by institutions of the European Community - A review" of the Commission this reads as follows:

"Experience has shown that the handling of requests can be burdensome. The purpose of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 being to disclose information in the public interest, the institutions have to balance the interest in disclosure against the workload entailed by the handling of a request. A situation where important resources are devoted to a limited number of voluminous, complex or otherwise burdensome requests would not be in the public interest. Therefore, it might be useful to define criteria with regard to the proportionality of access requests."

I hope that Finland and Sweden will not remain the only countries who will rally against any move to restrict access to EU documents.

It is amazing how a supra-state organisations that is already almost totally intransparent for the wider public is still trying to limit external access to its documents. We need to act, because if we keep quiet, we will lose more and more democratic elements of the European Union, and in the end, the only things remaining will be a number invisible Eurocrats and the priggish cries of pan-European eurosceptics...

I would like to see the European parties to give a very clear position on these issues. I won't vote for anyone who doesn't make access to EU documents and EU transparency a major goal!

German eurocrat leaks trade secrets

The Sunday Times has revealed that the German high-level European Commission official Fritz Harald Wenig, director for trade defence, divulged secrets worth several millions after having been invited to fency lobbyist lunches.

The two Times journalists investigating in this case disguised as British lobbyists working for a Chinese company, and Mr. Wenig followed their invitation to a fency restaurant to talk:

Within weeks Wenig was prepared to listen to suggestions of backhand payments and a proposal to take up a lucrative role with the fake lobbyists’ Chinese client.

It was no longer a joke. He passed on details about two Chinese companies which could not be obtained outside the commission and could have been commercially valuable – had he not been dealing with reporters.

Last week he also told the fake lobbyists about a crucial decision on footwear tariffs in advance of an expected decision on the subject this week by Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner.

Trade Commissioner Mandelson has informed that an investigation is on its way.

Update:

I just saw that Vitalij was already dealing with the subject yesterday.