Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-10-25-Speech-4-530-000"
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"en.20121025.35.4-530-000"2
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"Madam President, the Green Group and the Pirate Party welcome the participation of Russia in multilateral trade forums, and we see it as an important step that Russia has joined the World Trade Organisation. However, we believe that proper time must be given to Russia to implement the WTO requirements before we start talking about further bilateral negotiations on a free trade agreement with the EU.
In terms of access control and allegedly illegal content on line, the issue of blocking access to specific content has already been debated many times and by many people in the Member States and here in Parliament, but these proposals also exist in Russia, again with the higher risk of arbitrary application and again with a broader scope than we would normally find in Europe. If the European Union wishes to see the implementation of human rights, freedom of speech, free journalism and a free press in Russia, it will be important for us to establish – firstly for ourselves – open norms for free communication.
We agree that there is reason to remain vigilant on the Eurasian Customs Union, but we cannot automatically assume it is incompatible with Russia’s WTO obligations. Our group filed a number of amendments for which I would like to ask your support. In particular we would like to rethink the wisdom of paragraph 11, last indent, regarding pre-establishment investment protection and to request support for our Amendment 8. Russia has for a long time been the only country with a reasonably well-developed information and communications infrastructure that has not been subject to the TRIPS agreement requirements. This has led to interesting developments in the field of content distribution in Russia, not only in illegal downloading – a topic which we discuss with far too much aggression too frequently in our House – but also in distribution schemes that are, or were at the time of their emergence, legal under the Russian system.
At the same time the Russian authorities appeared to have no regard for freedom of communication or freedom of information flows. At least once during my time of political involvement, Russian authorities have casually shut down legal online distribution services at the request of foreign entities to accommodate the advancement of World Trade Organisation discussions.
It would be a shame if the TRIPS implementation chosen by Russia turned out to hinder rather than foster the previously-mentioned spirit of solutions for online distribution for the future. And there is good reason for the European Union to keep a close watch on the implementation of the TRIPS obligations in Russia. They establish a basis for economic interaction which depends completely on an administrative right, a monopoly granted by the government and its legal institutions to private parties. Are we confident that the Russian administration is consistent enough to provide such a basis?
In the field of copyright in particular, the TRIPS agreement and the present interpretation adopted by the disputes settlement body of the Berne three-step test should cause us to feel concern for how future implementation of Russian copyright will relate to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Already at European level we are suffering from inconsistencies with the application of notice and take-down orders.
One of the concerns raised in the European Union by many stakeholders is that notice and take-down requests risk imposing arbitrary restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of expression in the Member States. Similar objections have been raised in Spain and France in the implementation of laws that grant rightholders the power to request the take-down of a web page through administrative requests rather than judicial process.
The TRIPS agreement does not establish any boundaries for enforcement. In theory it can be extended as far and as arbitrarily as a signatory party wants it to be extended. Therefore we have to ask ourselves whether or not the situation in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of expression will be affected by the implementation of TRIPS in Russia. Given our experiences in Europe, we need to keep a close eye on this.
We will also have the opportunity to revisit the question of the monitoring of communications. The situation in many European jurisdictions with the Data Retention Directive and in terms of intermediary liability for intellectual property rights infringements is uncertain. Also in Russia there are extensive obligations on telecommunications providers and service providers to monitor the communications of their users. We have every reason to be vigilant so that the situation in Russia does not deteriorate with respect to the monitoring of communications."@en1
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"(The President requested the speaker to speak more slowly)"1
"Amelia Andersdotter,"1
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