Media Echo 2004-06-04
--> [ Dutch Parliament 2004-06-03 on Swpat ]
Dutch press reported on the Parliamentary debate on friday (2004-06-04) as follows:
State secretary Van Gennip apologises that minister Brinkhorst disinformed the Parliament. She admits that a letter that Minister Brinkhorst wrote to Parliament was "wrong". This, according to the article, is all the more painful for Brinkhorst, because only recently he criticised members of Parliament in very strong wording for their tiny comprehension of the EU. The "harsh words apply to ourselves", according to the state secretary. The Minister wrote the letter on 10 May, when the state secretary was on maternity leave. In the letter it is written the the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament very recently came to an agreement on a text of a directive about patents on software. In the next meeting of the Ministers in the Council for Competitive (what was the term again) this item "therefore is an A (rubber-stamp) point on the agenda", according to the letter.
State secteray Van Gennip had to use a lot of words explaining that this was only a first step in the decision making process that will probably not be closed until next year. After a proposal of the European Commission the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament will first have to agree about that proposal.
The European Parliament had adopted 64 amendements to the draft*directive of the Commission. The ministers already agreed on 26 of these, and as far as the Council of Ministers is concerned, 10 amendments are still open for discussion.
The Parliament (House of Commons) was not just really critical about the letter, but demanded also that minister Brinkhorst would not take a position about this without speaking with the Parliament before.
The three left-wing parties wanted to go one step futher and demanded that Brinkhorst vote against the draft-directive. Closing lines of the (nationwide-spread) article: The directive would make work impossible for small, innovating software companies and would bring big companies like Microsoft in a profitable position."
