Paris, February 20th, 2012 – This week, Members of the EU Parliament will be back in their home districts to meet with their constituency. This is an important opportunity for EU citizens to get in touch with their elected representatives, and make sure that they understand how dangerous and illegitimate ACTA is. Next week in Brussels, many decisive meetings will take place in the committees of the EU Parliament regarding ACTA.
This week is a so-called “green week”, when Members of the EU Parliament (MEPs) are free from their activities in Brussels and go back to their home country to meet with constituents. This brings an opportunity for citizens concerned with ACTA , the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, to meet with their MEPs, to inform them about its dangers and ask them to commit to rejecting it. So far, MEPs have been under intense lobbying from the entertainment industries and the EU Commission1http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta-commissioner-de-gucht-lies-to-the-eu-parliament, and it is time for them to engage with their constituents and take firm public positions.
This “green week” comes at a timely moment. On February 25th, citizens will gather once more across all of Europe to protest against ACTA and ask for its rejection. And next week, many meetings are planned in the various EU Parliament committees working on ACTA (INTA, ITRE and DEVE) to discuss the infamous agreement, just ahead of a workshop held on March 1st2https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Workshop_INTA_on_ACTA. During these meetings, important decisions will be taken regarding the procedure on ACTA, and so it is crucial that MEPs are well aware of the numerous political problems3https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Arguments_Against_ACTA raised by this illegitimate “trade agreement”.
How to act against ACTA in a nutshell
- To contact your MEPs regarding ACTA (especially those of the INTA, ITRE, LIBE, DEVE and JURI committees), visit our campaign page on how to act against ACTA.
- Make sure your MEPs know about all the critics of ACTA, such as the EU Data Protection Supervisor, the European Economic and Social Committee, 70 IPR experts and many others.
- Remind your MEPs of the facts about ACTA to counter the EU Commission’s lies.
- Ask your MEPs for a commitment and public statement asking for the rejection of ACTA, and input it in the relevant section (“public position”), at the bottom of their Political Memory page.