Philip Hunt wrote:
On Friday 07 November 2003 1:27 pm, James Heald wrote:
The briefing gives two options on the timing for Competitiveness Council of Ministers to make a political decision on the direction of the Council common text:
(i) The meeting of the Competitiveness Council on November 27th. This is the last date for political agreement, if the Directive is to complete its stages before the EuroParl elections next year.
Incidently, whatever happened to the meeting that was going to happen on November 10th (Monday), according to http://www.ffii.org.uk/council.html?
The original "plan A" intended by the UK Patent Office was for the Working Group meeting on October 23 to re-confirm the November 2002 draft, which was then to be rubber-stamped by the ministers on November 10th.
In the event this didn't happen.
According to reports we have of the October 23rd meeting,
* The presidency and the Commission prefer the fast-track road, because they think a lot of our amendments will not be able to get an absolute majority in second reading (this seems to be their decisive factor as to which strategy to pursue, according to our source), making their job easier. Therefore, both the Commission and the presidency will try to get a new common position of the council asap.
* France has indicated in that 23rd October meeting that it wants to have a thorough discussion about the amendments with all involved parties and wants to study the amendments in great detail. UK and Germany confirmed the previous standpoint of the Council should not be simply repeated. The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden want to take their time to study the amendments as well. Belgium did not take a position, because the minister had not been informed about that meeting by her civil servants (??) and as such the Coreper people had not received any instructions from her.
Note that despite being the delegation which originally proposed the adoption of the November 2002 draft unamended, by October 23 the UK had decided that the previous standpoint should *not* simply be repeated. This is the clearest evidence of the impact that our letter writing has been making. The UK ministers *did* overrule the patent office, and *may* now be open to what we have to say.
So far they have received hundreds of letters. That has been enough to get them to stop and think. But we need to make even more of a splash if we are to actually convince them on the issues. Every letter really does count.
The working group is next going to meet on 17 November to try to draft a political statement on the fundamental principles of the directive.
If they can agree it at that meeting, they will try to get it on to the agenda for the 27 November meeting of the Competitiveness Council of Ministers.
The biggest threat to us at the moment is that Governments across Europe will simply rubber-stamp a package prepared on 17 November.
We should be urging Governments to insist that the 'technical experts' produce not a cut-and-dried package, but instead an options document which can be openly discussed in the political arenas of each of the member states; and for the negotiations on the final strategy to be located at the political level, not the technical level, and then only after public discussion.