* ESCLUSIVA di nocensura.com


Dear Campaigner 

"Anti-Counterfeiting Trade-Agreement" (ACTA) http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/assets/pdfs/acta-crc_apr15-2011_eng.pdf 

ACTA transfers questions of copyright-, patent- and trademark-infringement, from civil law to criminal law, in 39 countries (assuming that Germany, Estonia, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Slovakia will ratify it)* and stipulates, without democratic authority, what that criminal law shall consist of.

It stipulates also that a QUANGO be set up (at public expense) by each signatory-government, to receive complaints from rights-holders and impose, on infringers, penalties "sufficient to have deterrent effect".

The ACTA-Committee, on which EU-governments will have a 27/12 majority, will meet periodically to consider ACTA-amendments, which will become law, in all 39 states, when every signatory-government has ratified them, without further consideration by any elected body - not even the EU's so-called "parliament".

Because UKIP insists on defending and restoring the sovereignty of the electorate and on the responsibility of elected representatives alone to make laws, UKIP is the only party to have opposed the ACTA unconditionally since it was first proposed.

Others (mainly Greens, Socialists and "Pirates") expressed disquiet about ACTA, in the EU's "parliament"; but they also subscribed to a Written Declaration and a Parliamentary Resolution, which merely called upon the EU-Commission to negotiate ACTA according to certain guidelines and including certain safeguards.  Thus, these statements failed to challenge either the essential rationale of ACTA, or the EU-Commission's legitimacy as the ACTA-negotiator.

UKIP challenges both of these things and so refused to subscribe to either statement.  In the approach to the 2010 General Election, in the UK, this refusal was alleged, by the Pirate-Party, to be evidence that UKIP was in favour of ACTA. This absurd allegation had little impact. The counter-accusation - that the leftists and "Pirates" are ready to accept some kind of EU-negotiated ACTA - is much more serious.

However, if the five governments, indicated above, sign the ACTA, then the agreement will come before the EU's "parliament" and can expect a rough reception there.  The Greens and Socialists - with 248 votes between them - have said they will oppose it. The "United Left" (34 votes) will follow suit.  Most of the EFD - including UKIP - and the NI (total 63 members) will also vote against.  The ECR - including the Tories - (53 members) may then feel that it cannot get away with not voting against, in which case, even if all of the EPP and ALDE - including the LibDems - vote for ACTA, this would provide a majority-against of 26, the defeat of ACTA and the first defeat of a major Commission-proposal since 2005.

Prior to this, we shall see if an instrument can be raised - by UKIP-Peers, in the House of Lords - calling upon HMG to withdraw its signature from ACTA. By doing this, we would attract more public attention to ACTA and to UKIP's opposition to it, even though the instrument would almost certainly be rejected, because both the Commons' and the Lords' "EU-scrutiny-committees" expedited the ACTA, last year, without even putting it to votes, in their respective Houses.

(In the Commons Scrutiny-Committee - Chairman, the famous "EU-sceptic", Bill Cash - the ACTA was included among "22 [EU-] documents not raising questions of sufficient legal or political importance to warrant a substantive report to the House", and was nodded through on that basis!)

Westminster having thus become, predominantly, the haunt of EU-sycophants and EU-careerists, it falls to the EU's "parliament" (which is usually even worse) to stand in the way of a seminal, politico-commercial, supra-nationalist initiative, and UKIP will make every effort to ensure that, for only the second time this century, it actually does so. 

Yours sincerely

Andrew S. Reed

Office of Nigel Farage, Brussels

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