Psssst! Want to see what this ACTA secrecy is about?
Have a look at: < http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4829/125/ >, then contact your MP.
The European Parliament has repeated its call for greater transparency in negotiations over an international intellectual property agreement. A majority of MEPs has signed a declaration demanding the publication of negotiation documents. The European Commission began negotiating the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) on …
I infer from that linked article that the total lack of any objections from that censorship loving, luddite paradise in Australia means my elected representatives are just rubber stamping without question everything that their buddies in Washington tell them to.
Business as usual it is then.
I agree that the European Parliament seems to be very good at representing out interests. I'm more worried about the European Commission which appears to be unelected, accountable to no one and can just tell the European Parliament to get lost when ever it likes. Can someone explain to me what the European Commission is for?
For all that they are unelected (much like the UK house of Lords) these guys do a better job of representing the interests of the average person than politicians who have been bought and sold several times over by the media companies driving the ACTA. Being unelected gives a certain freedom to do what is right and make common sense decisions rather than dealing in short term political sound bites like most European politicians.
It for doing things that a democratic process would never allow.
Without it the EU would cease to function, because Europe isn't a country and it's "nationals" don't have an affinity for one-another. In fact we've pretty much never stopped fighting each other except during the cold war when the iron hand of autocracy and paranoia kept things in check.
The EU commission has seen what works and realised what it has to do to keep things "moving forward" to "ever closer union."
Isn't pragmatism great?
As the child of one European Commission worker and one European Council worker I can tell you that, in a nutshell the ECom is, at the top levels, a bunch of Sir Humphrey Applebeys who view the European Parliament as a hindrance to good governance...
...Like most civil services really.
However it must be said that the lower level ranks are, for the most part, filled with hard-working people who just try to get the job done.
Some of the stories I have head about shenanigans in both EC's have seriously dented my faith in the EU