The EU Parliament is now on track to reject ACTA (Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement), following todays vote in the International Trade committee today. The vote follows 4 other committees that also voted to reject it. On the INTA committee, 31 MEPs voted

in total, 19 in favour of rejection, 12 against. This means that the recommendation to the whole Parliament - the plenary - will be rejection. Technically, it will decline consent to ACTA. An amendment proposing postponement of the plenary vote until after the ECJ ruling, was rejected.

The whole European Parliament is expected to vote on ACTA on 4th July. However, the result is by no means a foregone conclusion. A study of past votes on copyright - notably the Telecoms Package - tells us that events can intervene.

A rejection of ACTA will set the Parliament against the Commission, in an inter-institutional argument that has been brewing ever since the Parliament started work on ACTA. Yesterday, the Trade Commissioner made a last-ditch attempt to persuade the committee in favour of post-ponement - see EU Parliament: we will not be pushed, Mr DeGucht!

After the vote, the rapporteur, David Martin, was surrounded by television crews, indicating the level of political importance that ACTA - and the Internet copyright issue - has now attained in the European Parliament.

For the story of what happened in the Telecoms Package, see my book. The Copyright Enforcement Enigma

This is an original article from Iptegrity.com. You may re-publish it under a Creative Commons licence, but you should cite my name and provide a link back to iptegrity.com. Media and Academics - please cite asMonica Horten, EU Parliament Trade committee says no to ACTA www.iptegrity.com, 21 June 2012 . Commercial users - please contact me