on January 26, 2010 by admin in communiqué, transaction, Comments (1)

ACTA – Legislative impact on CARIFORUM states must be stopped!

In the shadow of the battle for transparency in the ACTA negotiations, FFII uncovered a bilateral treaty between the EU and Korea from last year. The final version was published in October and seemed to contain very detailed provisions on IPR and ICT.

It’s been shown in mid-January that the high level of detail in this agreement is high because the agreements contains large chunks copied straight from existing EU legislation.

ACTA is suspected of being a problem because it’s detailed, and that it will contain sharp instruments for enforcement of copyright. But in the Korea agreement, we are already getting sharp instruments on a global level, if it passes. And even when Korea FTA does not change any directives as such, trade agreements will always be considered “sources of interpretation” in courts, and may change how case law turns out!

This agreement will have go to through the European parliament either in an assent procedure or a co-decision procedure some time during the spring. The IP chapter should be removed from the agreement, or the agreement turned down, or we’re creating a legal order in which it is okay for Directorate-General (DG) Trade to make legislative initiatives in secrecy on a global level.

What is worse is, there is an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with a coalition of Caribbean states (CARIFORUM) which was signed in 2008 and passed through parliament by assent procedure last year. This EPA is also Korea-level detail. There seems to be an attempt to implicitly transfer power to the DG Trade to conclude these treaties, and if we’re going for ACTA we need to stop that.

These sections of Korea are copied from EU directives:
http://www.erikjosefsson.eu/sites/default/files/92.243.28.240.html

Agreement texts:
http://euwiki.org/FTA/CARIFORUM
http://euwiki.org/FTA/Korea
http://euwiki.org/FTA/Canada

Economic partnership agreements:
http://ec.europa.eu/trade/wider-agenda/development/economic-partnerships/negotiations/

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