Commissioner McCreevy: A deal is a deal

Strasburg, 8 March 2005 -- The Commissioner for the Internal Market explained the procedure on the software patent directive to members of the European Parliament between 18.00 and 18.45 CET this evening. The issue was mixed up with great concern of !MEPs about the EU Services draft directive. Charlie McCreevy was humiliated over the Council "adoption". !MEPs expressed great concern about the affront of the new Commissioner to Parliament. In EU Parliament the Council events of yesterday are seen as a severe power struggle rather than a normal issue of political disagreement with the Commission.

Agenda of plenary does not mention the CII phrase Commission communication: Services in the internal market/Patentability of computer software Charlie McCreevy (Member of the Commission) made the communication.

The following spoke under the 'catch the eye' procedure: Marianne Thyssen, Evelyne Gebhardt, Hans-Peter Martin, Cecilia Malmström, Dimitrios Papadimoulis, Marie Anne Isler Béguin, Philippe de Villiers, Jacques Toubon, Michel Rocard, Michał Tomasz Kamiński, Malcolm Harbour, Anders Samuelsen, Philip Bushill-Matthews, Anne Van Lancker, Bruno Gollnisch, Charlotte Cederschiöld, Sophia in 't Veld, Gunnar Hökmark, Evelin Lichtenberger, Vittorio Emanuele Agnoletto, Jan Andersson, Othmar Karas, Emanuel Jardim Fernandes, Marielle De Sarnez, Avril Doyle, on the conduct of the debate, and Charlie McCreevy.

Quotes

Charlie McCreevy

Jeannot Krecké, Chair of the Competitiveness Council, already explained to the Legal Affairs Committee, the reasons behind the Councils stance. It confirmed its common position, primarily for institutional reasons. The Council wanted to avoid a precedent whereby Member States would be seen to be backing away from a deal they had signed up to in May 2004. The Council confirmed its position to show that a deal is a deal and that it was not creating a log-jam on this dossier, in an area which is key for innovation. Jeannot Krecké noted yesterday, when the Council took its decision, that some Member States had concerns on the substance of the text and that these would be addressed in the second reading. The ball is now very clearly in the European Parliaments court. It's for you to decide how you want to play it. I don't have to remind you of the Parliament's rights. We've discussed this in the conference of Presidents. You can of course reject or substantially amend the proposal. If the Parliament decides to reject it, then the commision will respect your wishes. I will not propose a new directive.
.. I know a new wind is blowing on this. This is reflective its position expressed in the council and the parliament and the Commision will take a count of this and respect this.
.. Well, ehh, to the wide ranging ehh a issues raised I could possibly not contribute to all the points. But on the software patents - and I clearly indicate on the software patent - the ball is in the court of the European Parliament. If the parliament wishes to reject it then the Commission will respect that decision.

Lichtenberger

Der Text, der jetzt vom 18. Mai übrig ist hat keine Mehrheit in der derzeitigen Form. Die Einwendungen der Staaten sind bis jetzt unberücksichtigt geblieben. Ich will keinen Machtkampf zwischen Parlament, Rat und Kommission, sondern ich will eine sachliche Behandlung der Einwendungen in dieser Richtlinie. Das erwart ich mir von Ihnen.

Sophia in 't Veld:

I have to say that I'm extraordinarily disturbed to learn that behind the back of the European Parliament negotiations are going on with certain member states, or in the case of software the standpoint of the Parliament is simply ignored. Secondly, about the content, there is much talk about the Lisbon strategy, the necessity of innovation and stimulation of the European services market (....) Concerning the software, the quality of the legislation must not be made subordinate to a power struggle between the institutions; we need innovation and that must not be choked by wrong legislation. In short, mister Creevy, one should do more than just show lip service to the Lisbon strategy, and secondly, one should respect the democratic process and the chosen representation of Europe.

Remark:

While listening to the recordings, take care what directive project they are talking about: "Services in the internal market" or "swpat directive".

Jan Wildeboer

"Parlament, friss oder stirb", nur etwas freundlicher
verpackt. Da McCreevy den Restart bereits abgelehnt hat hat er nun noch mal bekräftigt zu keiner Kooperation bereit zu sein. Sollte EP den jetzigen Stand ablehen gibt es keine neue Richtlinie. Basta. McCreevy verpackt sehr freundlich seine Position: Das Parlament kann nur rumreden, die Entscheidungen treffen eh wir in der Kommission. Die Realität gibt ihm ja leider recht ....

Recordings

Unfortunately it seems all these files are not accessible anymore due to a assumed hardware failure, FFII needs your help, especially if you live near Munich or Hamburg, and can work to repair servers in an urgency (or administer them) please subscribe and tell us how you can help us! Alternatively, you can read this this satire and spend the money on donating FFII (as an alternative to bribe suggested there, or by the direct link.

Instead, we can only refer you to privately-made transcodes, which are not neccesarily as well-connected to the internet as the above new FFII server, which unfortunately crashed:

Videos:

http://apoc.csbnet.se/europarl/europarl-raw-stream-en.avi.gz (unpack with winzip or gunzip)
http://baron.tky.hut.fi/europarl-raw-stream-en.gz
- both have no index, so for use with mplayer, you need to use the option -idx

In connection to the speech of McCreevy, you might also take a quick peek at the speech which has been read-out by Bolkestein, McCreevy's predecessor: http://www.ffii.org/~arebenti/audio/BolkDoom030923.ogg

Transkript

Will get prepared on Eptrans050308En