Brussels, April 26th 2012 – Marielle Gallo, rapporteur of ACTA for the Legal Affairs committee of the EU Parliament, is engaging in new political tricks to buy time and delay the ACTA vote. By doing so, she hopes to defuse the political debate, whose momentum goes in the direction of rejecting ACTA.
Once again, the rapporteur of ACTA in the “Legal Affairs” (JURI) committee Marielle Gallo (France, EPP), famous for her extreme positions on online copyright enforcement, is showing her skills in political manoeuvre. After pushing for a quick vote on her pro-ACTA draft opinion report without amendments, she asked this morning for the vote to be postponed. She claims that EU Privacy Watchdog opinion – which is extremely critical of ACTA’s digital chapter – had to be taken into account, to refine her draft opinion report.
The rest of the JURI committee unfortunately agreed1JURI committee voted to postpone the vote 15 to 9 and also agreed to send a letter to Karel De Gucht, the EU Trade Commissioner, to ask for clarification of ACTA’s legal framework, as proposed by Mrs. Gallo2A proposal adopted with 22 votes for and 2 abstentions.. But this initiative is totally useless, since the Commission’s response will be non-binding, politically biased, and therefore close to meaningless.
As a consequence of this delay, the JURI committee will most likely not be able to vote on its opinion before the “International Trade” (INTA) committee adopts its own final report3There will be a new discussion on the letter’s content during a later meeting of the committee.
This shows the hidden goal of Marielle Gallo: postponing the final vote on ACTA until after the summer, hoping that this will weaken the citizen mobilization against the agreement. Does she feel so unconfident of her opinion’s reception by her colleagues that she is compelled to resort to such procedural manoeuvres?, said Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net.
Members of the EU Parliament must reject any further delay of the ACTA procedure. Citizens must contact their representatives to ensure that the Parliament will reject ACTA during its July plenary session.