Letter to MEPs on restart issue

-> [ letters | JURI 05-01 | restart ]

We need a letter that goes right into the heart of the 1st vs 2nd reading question and gives MEPs the information they will be most interested in. This letter can be sent by FFII and partner associations and published on our front page so as to inspire other letter-writers.

Key messages:

• new voting rules (EP rule x ?) introduced 1 year ago (Nice treaty?) make Parliament weaker than Council, may have induced Council to ignore Parliament and test whether key amendments can be supported by 60-70% with lots of new MEPs in a short time.
• UNICE member association internal communique in favor of quick 2nd reading because they say Council version is optimal for them and MEPs won't be able to put together the 60-70% majority for any of the substantial amendment

• FUD campaign going on, issue deemed complex, difficult to understand in short time (see appendices debunking Ericsson/Nokia FUD). N/E patent lawyers are afraid that drawn-out politisation of the subject is prompting the EPO to become stricter and throwing more and more doubt on their unlawuful software patent acquisitions. (Siemens medical data collection example)

• JURI needs only to decide whether to create an option of renewed 1st reading. Decision on whether to use the option is taken only when the Council position comes. But if option is not created now, EP will then be forced into 2nd reading.
• CEC also seems to be eager to deprive EP of its option (recent maneuver)
• UNICE is right: the Parliament has been substantially weakened (by Nice treaty?). Therefore it is all the more important that something constructive comes out of the Council and that the Council's rules are interpreted in a democratic spirit.
• Two-phase decision process allows B-item. Poland deserves all the support that MEPs can mobilise. Please talk to home governments to get their support for B-item.
• In case B-item fails, restart is the only way to get another 1st reading in the Council, and this next one can only be better than the 1st one. National Parliaments have started waking up (examples NL, DE, DK) and patent administrators are gradually losing control. But the ice is thick due to the double lack of democracy in both the patent world and the intergovernmental world, and in this case a specially long thawing/melting phase is needed.
• Tabling Office has rejected 61 MEP motion without giving a reason. Rule 55 clearly states that MEPs have this rights, and we hope MEPs will, if necessary, go to ECJ to make sure they are not deprived of this right. Deprivation of rights by heightened majority requirements for 2nd reading is bad enough. We are very worried to see EP rights being eroded instead of strengthened. We fully support all efforts of MEPs to assert their rights and believe that full resistance to the pressures of the national patent adminsitrators will be rewarded by a strengthening of parliamentary democracy in the EU.
• FFII meanwhile has a representative office, is working closely with CEA-PME, has ... members ... companies .. Sorry for spam from the supporter community. Not all people are very clueful, but on the whole, the level of political education has risen and the experience for the EP will be a pleasant one.