Maltese EU delegates were only present for the first negotiating round, out of 10, during talks on the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, a press statement released by the European Commission yesterday has revealed.
Anything legal today will still be legal if Acta comes into force, and vice-versa
Negotiations on the controversial international copyright treaty began in June 2008 in Geneva, with Malta being one of 14 EU countries represented.
But Malta does not figure among the represented countries in any of the nine further negotiating rounds held between July 2008 and October 2010. The Finance Ministry, contacted yesterday evening, was not available for comment.
The EU and 22 of its member states, including Malta, signed the agreement last month in Tokyo with minimal fanfare. The agreement seeks to reinforce existing intellectual property right laws.
But concerns – and several rumours – about the agreement’s potential impact on internet privacy, online piracy and trade in generic medicines created a swarm of public concern that culminated in mass protests across European capitals last Saturday.
Governments and the Commission have scrambled to react to public protests, with several East European governments saying they are reconsidering their decision to sign the agreement. Germany, which was one of the five member states yet to sign, has said that it will not do so for the time being.
The European Commission moved to assuage concerns and address several misconceptions about the agreement yesterday, telling journalists across the EU that for the individual citizen, Acta changed nothing.
“Anything legal today will still be legal if Acta comes into force, and vice-versa,” a Commission spokesman said. “All this agreement does is provide governments and private rights holders with the tools they need, at both civil and criminal levels, to protect their intellectual property.”
Concerns about the agreement’s impact on people’s online access and privacy were completely unfounded, the spokesman continued.
“EU citizens are already protected by a huge number of agreements and directives. Nothing in Acta will change this.”
The spokesman insisted that the EU’s e-commerce directive, in force since 2000, made it clear that internet service providers were not liable for the content they carried to their customers. Acta would not change that either, he said.
Nor would trade in generic medicines be affected. “The EU has a booming trade in generic medicines. We have no intention of damaging that.”
Much controversy concerning the agreement has involved the allegedly secretive nature in which it was negotiated. Initial negotiations were held behind closed doors, with information on preliminary discussions being published by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
But the Commission yesterday dismissed claims of secrecy, publishing a list of consultation meetings held with the European Parliament, civil society organisations and various interested stakeholders dating back to 2008.
Labour Party IT spokesman Michael Farrugia yesterday insisted that the agreement could not be amended or adopted piecemeal. “If there’s even a single word in the agreement that raises doubts, you must be against it,” Dr Farrugia said.
He dismissed the government’s proposal to introduce four new internet-related civil rights as an exercise in politicking, saying that while details of the proposals had yet to be communicated, the draft bill could not go against Acta, which the government had already signed.
Last Saturday, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi had said that the government would soon be moving to enshrine four new civil rights, including the right to internet access and freedom to exchange information online, in the Constitution.
The Malta Anti-Acta Group yesterday cautiously welcomed the government’s announcement, saying that it was a “positive step” for Maltese society provided that certain basic freedoms were respected.
It however noted that its opposition to Acta was not only based on the issue of digital rights, saying that its concerns about the agreement’s potential impact on trade in generic medicines or the current intellectual property right system as a whole remained unaddressed.