swpat to be council A point *again*?

MJ Ray mjr at dsl.pipex.com
Fri Feb 11 20:37:37 UTC 2005


And more on this in today's Midday Express press conference:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/ebs/schedule_old.cfm?jour=6&semaine=7


My view: It looks like the Commission is really trying to hammer
this bad law home, despite the EP request to restart. I suspect
that they want the Council to pass it so they can broker some
worse compromise law than the previously amended EP version. Do
they really want to be associated with forcing bad laws? Has
someone threatened to increase their software licence fees?

I also wonder about the "has been removed" phrasing: midnight
gun on the Polish minister?


Transcript:

35:30 Now, before we move on to your general questions,
Oliver has an announcement to make concerning the proposal on
protection of computer-implemented inventions.

35:41 Thank you for using the difficult word, then I can
go over to using software patents.  This is a statement on
behalf of the Commissioner for the Internal Market Charlie
McCreevy on the computer-implemented inventions directive.
Well, basically the Commission regrets very much that the
software patent directive is not on the Council agenda for
17 of February as the existing objections to the adoption of
the common position as an A point appear to have been removed.
Now, Commissioner McCreevy reiterates that that the Commission
stands ready to find solutions, once the council and the EP take
forward work on this proposal.  So, that's the message.

36:31 Thank you Oliver. So, questions on that? John?

36:36 Are you saying just that the Commission refuses to try
to broker some kind of a deal until the Council bangs the gavel
on the quasi-political agreement they have?

36:47 Well, as I was just saying, John, the Commission
stands ready to find solutions but we can do that once the
other institutions, particularly the Council in this respect,
is moving ahead and doing its work there.  Well, I don't have
to repeat the story about this of the last weeks, month and
almost year now, and we are just disappointed that it's
not as an A point on the next Council and that is
just the announcement that I wanted to make today.

37:20 Simon?

37:23 When you say you're disappointed because the remaining
objections to adoption have been removed, does that mean that
you think the Dutch minister is not going to block the adoption
of the A point in the near future, because there are reports
to that effect?  Are you aware or not aware of that?

37:51 Well, what I can tell you about this is that the
long-remaining obstacle - and we all know what country this
was - that there are no problems any more in that respect so
there are all kinds of other reasons which are not something I
want to speculate on which took this issue suddenly again off
the Council agenda and again the Commissioner for the Internal
Market he is disappointed about this because finally he was
hoping that we could move forward on this issue.

38:21 Connor, you had a question on this?

38:27 Just a simple one really.  Has the Commiisioner been in
contact with the Luxembourg presidency to express his displeasure
and has he found out why they haven't gone along with your view
that it could be taken as an A point?

38:40 Well, there is of course ongoing contact between the
institutions here but at this place I just wanted to express
the explicit regrets of Commissioner Charlie McCreevy on this
issue that it's not as an A point on the next Council.

38:55 Carl?

39:00 And has the Commission received a formal request from
the Parliament president?

39:06 The answer to that is no.

39:11 On this subject? Yep, the gentleman over there.

39:15 Can you tell me in whose court the ball is at the moment?

39:22 I am trying to find the person who asked this question.
Where are you? Ah! There you are. This is the BBC there, no?
Well, again, if we want to move forward, we need to progress in
particularly the Council at this stage because that's where it
is, so and again the Commissioner is disappointed that it's not
on the next Council because this was looking quite good for a
few days.

39:55 (Faint laughter somewhere in the hall)

39:59 Right. If there's no more questions on this, I'll take
questions on other subjects.




More information about the Discussion mailing list