There is a new information from Sweden, Åsa Torstensson from the Swedish Government will meet the United States representatives on ACTA transparency. She is the Swedish minister for Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communication, and Sweden is still presidency of the European Council. We rebuild kindly translated the substance of her message for non-Swedish speaking parties:
There is a shadow on the world, a shadow of secrecy surrounding the ACTA treaty. We are concerned that this treaty will have severe consequences for the future of the Internet. But there is no need to fear, only to rebuild and patch the errors that appear in politics.
Towards the end of this month, Swedish Minister of Communications Åsa Torstensson will travel to Washington DC to convey one (out of several other) important message from the European Union and Sweden. …
Åsa Torstensson will also meet with the president’s advisor Peter Cowhey (Senior Counselor to the US Trade Representative) in order to discuss the new trade agreement known as the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” (ACTA), which is currently being negotiated. Åsa Torstensson will present the opinion that the negotiations process should be opened up, so that interested parties and groups are given the opportunity to submit more detailed opinions about the contents of the negotiations and draft documents.
Let me add that 1st of December Art 15 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU is set into force. In my German language “confirmatory application” for an ACTA document access to the European Council I argued recently that this takes effects for the ACTA document access regime as well.
I continue to advocate the following doctrine:
If the EU-Commission (DG Trade) is unable to comply with Art 15 (former Art 255) citizen rights then the Commission lacks authority to negotiate such legislative and regulative matters with these third nations. It is upon the US and other nations to agree on a transparency regime compliant with Art 15 citizen rights.
It seems unacceptable to me that documents are provided to few American professional lobbyists but not to European legislators (despite repeated requests) and European citizens which enjoy a right scrutinize such documents of legislative nature.
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