Poland (8 votes)
Poland was represented on the Council debate and vote on this directive by minister Jarosl/aw Pietras, from the Office of the Committee for European Integration. The body entiteld to make the decision on this directive from the polish govrnement is the Ministry of Scientific Research and Information Technology. That ministry gave the instructions to vote against the directive in the version presented by COREPER, and give support to amendments which where to be introduced by Germany. All the time up until half an hour before the vote on 18 may 2004, the German amendments where substantially different from the ones that where introduced in the final vote. Specifically they had the two very important sentences "The use of natural forces to control physical effects beyond the digital representation of information belongs to a technical field. The mere processing, handling, and presentation of information do not belong to a technical field, even where technical devices are employed for such purposes." Delegations, where like in the polish delegation not the minister responsible for informatics, but another delgate is participating in the vote, did not have any chances to make a good decision, as they needed to consult appropieate ministries back in their countries, and there was simply not enought time for that, as there was less then half an hour between presenting the amendments and voting. That was exactly the situation with the polish delegation: minister Jarosl/aw Pietras called the ministry of scientific Research and Information Technology in Poland, and asked for instructions about the new amendments, but before any carefull legal analisys of the amendments could take place, the vote was over in the Council. That is why the representative of Poland did not make a vote after the break in the Council - becasue he did not want to make a bad decision. This was certainly not a sign of support for the directive.
Hungary (5 votes)
Hungarian representative Peter Gottfried made a very ambigious speech in which he carefully did not give away his mandate nor any opinions. No more trails can be found of the events, except that he couldn't possibly have voted NO, despite every earlier promises not to support software patents. There was confusion for a few days back home after the session, and the IHM Ministry made a clarification and justified their YES vote in a press-release. This surprised many but noone was in position to do anything. The reversal is on the agenda for a decision making body on the 28th of August 2004.
Netherlands (5 votes)
Ministry misled the NL Parliament, claimed that nobody wanted software patents and that for this an agreement between EP and Council had been reached. Later the Parliament passed a motion asking the government to withdraw its support from the Council proposal, see NlparlDetal040603En.
Denmark (3 votes)
Minister wasn't present, diplomat didn't know what to do, comical dialogue:
http://kwiki.ffii.org/ConsVideo0405En