Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-09-Speech-2-489"

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"Mr President, I must say that, listening to the speeches after I took the floor, it comes to my mind that a lot of you were not listening properly to what I was saying, because I made it very clear that we were going to respect the that I would try to make sure the other parties to the agreement give their OK to the disclosure of the text that is currently being negotiated; I made it clear that it would only apply to the commercial infringement of intellectual property rights, and I could continue for some time like this. So I am not going to respond again to all these questions that have been put because, honestly, I think I already answered them in my first speech. Finally, let me make it very clear that what I have been saying and what I said in the hearing should be taken seriously. I will do my utmost to have the agreement of the contracting parties that we can fully inform you. As long as that is not the case, I cannot disclose to you the drafts of the agreement because that would breach the confidentiality agreement and breaching such an agreement would have effects that are not limited to the ACTA negotiations but would spill over to a lot of other negotiations we have with these countries concerned. It would breach the confidentiality as such and that makes all negotiations very difficult, if not impossible, but I will do my best to see that you get the stuff. David Martin put the question, what happens when somebody is, in fact, leaving not only the European Union but leaving a country that is a party to the ACTA Agreement? That is an interesting question because it depends, of course, on where he is going to. If he is going to a country that is not a party to the ACTA Agreement, then it will depend upon the customs and police of the country concerned, but that is beyond our reach. As far as it is within our reach, we will make sure that this is not happening but, of course, we cannot speak for others. I do not quite agree with the whole of Ms in ’t Veld’s reasoning on parliamentary approval and parliamentary control, but let me just say very clearly what I think the case is in the Treaty of Lisbon. The case is that the Council gives a mandate to the Commission, and the Commission negotiates, and the Council has taken a decision on a mandate following their own rules of procedure. Whether or not a minister in the Council of Ministers needs the approval of his national parliament beforehand is not a matter of European law, but a matter of national law, and that differs from one country to another. I know that in your country, for example, for many positions of that kind, they need approval beforehand from the Parliament – OK, but there are other countries where this is not the case. We should not, I think, judge the way the Council takes a decision. Insofar as the Council respects the treaty and their own rules of procedure, I think that it is their business and not directly ours. You were, to a certain extent, protecting me in that they should not check my iPod. I have no iPod, so there is no problem yet. In fact, I have had one since yesterday, but I have not yet used it and I am not going to New Zealand. It is a little bit too far. For that, you need officials who have a little bit more time to go there. I shall leave the whole discussion on the kitchen for Mrs Stassen ... Interesting question, what about China? Well, China is not, as you know, Ms Roithová, a party to the present negotiations. China is a serious problem because, as you rightly state, they are the number one source of counterfeiting. Now we have several negotiations with them and discussions with them, also the high-level economic dialogue. Repeatedly, we put emphasis on intellectual property rights, which is one of the main problems, not only within Internet trade but also in a lot of other activities. Once ACTA is concluded, it will be open to all countries to sign it, and I hope that China will come to the conclusion that, for their own industry too, it would be beneficial if there were better protection of intellectual property rights, and sooner or later, that will come. Look at other countries where this also happened in the past: now they have much more interest in intellectual property rights. I do not quite agree on the interpretation by Mr Le Hyaric and Mrs Trautmann concerning Article 218. What Article 218 says is that Parliament should be informed about all steps in the procedure; well, you are, and even more than that. What we do by way of information goes far beyond what is mentioned in Article 218, far beyond, but I have no problem with that. I made it clear in my introductory statement that we will insist on other parties agreeing that we be in a position to disclose the present draft of the text, but it is not correct that we would not be respecting Article 218. By the way, let me say to Ms in ’t Veld, we sent you Annex 16 to the agreed statement by all ACTA participants about maintaining the confidentiality of documents. That was sent to you by the Director–General, Mr David O’Sullivan, on 21 January 2009. Of course, that was in the previous Parliament, but it is still the same person. Mr O’Sullivan is the same and Ms in ’t Veld is the same, so you got it. So it is a little bit difficult then to question me as to what this is all about."@en1
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