CETA Internet provisions ‘completely’ changed since February: EU

The leaked February draft of Canada’s trade agreement with the EU is now “completely outdated” as the current version does not contain the most contested provisions of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), EU trade spokesman John Clancy said in an emailed statement. “The accusations are nonsense. A future EU-Canada trade deal will be very similar to the bilateral trade deal with South Korea already up and running for a year and which has not brought about the end of a free Internet,” Clancy said. “The discussed document appears to be a leaked CETA draft negotiating text from February this year which is now completely outdated. Several negotiating working sessions have taken place since then with Canada and the provisions that were most contested in ACTA (article 27.3 and 27.4) are just not there anymore so there is no basis for any conspiracy theories here,” he said. Michael Geist, the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, published a February leaked draft of the Canada-EU Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) on his blog Monday, writing that it showed the EU sought to use the CETA “as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions.” Responding in part to rallies against the ACTA across Europe in February, the European Parliament on July 4 rejected the agreement by a vote of 478 to 39 (with 165 abstentions). Digital rights groups have campaigned against the ACTA, saying its proposals would stifle Internet freedoms. An emailed statement to The Wire Report from the European Commission’s trade press office said the leaked CETA text most likely dates from “when ACTA had just been signed by the European Union and 22 Member States and when the consent process of ACTA started in the European Parliament. So there is no backdoor strategy by the European Commission. It would only be natural that at that time, some provisions discussed with Canada would bear similarities to the ones in ACTA, to which Canada is also a party.” The CETA text dealing with the Internet “is now totally different from ACTA,” the statement said. “Most importantly, those articles mostly contested in ACTA (Art. 27.3 and 27.4 on the internet) are not part of the present CETA text anymore (and have been replaced by an entirely different text based on the EU's E-Commerce directive), contrary to what is currently being claimed by many.” The statement said other provisions now in CETA are based on the EU’s 2000 E-commerce Directive, the 2001 Information Society Directive, the 2003 Customs Regulation, and the 2004 Enforcement Directive. Other provisions come from international agreements such as the World Trade Organization agreement Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the press office said. The statement said CETA’s criminal provisions are being negotiated by the rotating presidency on behalf of member states, and the last negotiating session on that aspect of the agreement took place by video conference in October 2011. The EU press office said “no agreement was reached on some of the proposals by Canada which are indeed far-reaching. It is up to the Council and Member States to decide how the chapter on criminal enforcement will be adapted to take into account the rejection of ACTA.” Canada and the EU hope to finalize the CETA this year. According to an October 2010 leaked draft of the CETA, the EU had proposed an extension of Canada’s term of copyright from 50 to 70 years following the death of the author, a measure that was not included in the Conservative government’s copyright reform legislation passed in June. That proposed provision was not included in the latest leaked text from February. The European Commission is seeking a legal opinion from the European Court of Justice on whether the ACTA conflicts with any fundamental rights of European citizens such as freedom of speech. The Conservative government signed the ACTA last year. It is an international intellectual property trade agreement between Australia, Canada, the European Commission and the EU member states, and Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States. news@thewirereport.ca

CETA Internet provisions ‘completely’ changed since February: EU

Broadcast | July 13, 2012

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CETA Internet provisions ‘completely’ changed since February: EU

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