EU To Sign ACTA Later This Month 168
rysiek writes "At a meeting of Polish Government officials with Polish NGOs and business representatives it was confirmed that the European Union is poised to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as soon as January 26th. But all is not lost. The Treaty still needs to be ratified by the Euro Parliament and member states individually. The ratification vote is important, as it is an either-or vote — if not ratified there, ACTA gets rejected in its entirety. The Ministry of Administration and Digitization is not amused and has asked the Prime Minister (who promised this May to hold ACTA adoption until the kinks are worked out) to cancel the signing authorization for the time being."
prime minister bit is about poland only (Score:4, Informative)
The Ministry of Administration and Digitization is not amused and has asked the Prime Minister (who promised this May to hold ACTA adoption until the kinks are worked out) to cancel the signing authorization for the time being.
This bit, the last sentence, is about Poland only, one of the 27 EU member states.
There are no ministers in the EU government, I think the closest would the comissioners in the EU Comission (EU government/executive branch) whose head is the president. And there are several vice-presidents among the comissioners.
Though there is the Council of the EU aka Council of Ministers. This council consists of one minister from each member states depending on the topic of discussion. Agriculture ministers when discussing agriculture etc.
EDRi has launched: What's Wrong with ACTA Week (Score:5, Informative)
European Digital Rights has launched http://www.edri.org/ACTA_Week [edri.org] with 5 one page briefings that you can send to your National and Euro member of parliaments. Please do so, it will not take you long.
Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:5, Informative)
EU Commissioners are appointed by their home government based on arbitrary criteria. Here in the UK, for example, that means the only way to prevent such an appointment is to not elect the entire administration that makes the appointment anything up to five years earlier. Clearly no-one is really going to change their one vote for the national government to another political party just so that the wrong EU Commissioner doesn't get appointed 4.5 years later, so there is really no democratic mandate or accountability at all.
Re:Politicians we elected? You must be new here. (Score:5, Informative)
The EU Parliamant is a rather toothless, feeble thing due to the EU member countries not wanting to sign over sovereign rights. There are a couple of treaties for signing EU stuff into national law but most countries simply drag their feet. The process how this EU law-making process works is also not quite ideal...
The EU Commission is elected by gorvernments who themselves are elected. That's barely legitimate when it comes to democracy.
Re:Explain this to an American programmer (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go:
http://ec.europa.eu/codecision/stepbystep/diagram_en.htm [europa.eu]
Technically, we are about to complete step 1.