Vous trouverez la traduction de ce texte ci dessous.
A translation from CE's text about the Telecom package and ammendment 138 in Swedish:
http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/ … ompaketet/
Chaotic delegation meeting about the telecoms package
Yesterday's meeting on the telecoms package was fairly chaotic. As Hax writes, this is not how legislation
should be conducted. I am very critical of the President, the Spanish Christian Democrat Alejo Vidal-
Quadras, handled the meeting and the negotiations with the Council of Ministers.
According to the rules, the European Parliament's 27-man delegation of Parliament is to decide what to say
to the Council. Then it is the three negotiators work on the basis of that mandate to handle the so-called
"trilogue" discussions with Council representatives.
At the last delegation meeting on October 7th it was made clear that the negotiators had no mandate to hold
discussions on the basis of the proposals that the Council and the Commission had presented, but that they
would stick to its attribution of the additional 138 and try to get the Council to formally tell how they oppose
it.
Before yesterday's meeting there had been reports that negotiators had ignored its mandate and failed the
Parliament. The data proved to be 100% true.
When the three negotiators met with the Council, they had only talked about the Council and the
Commission's proposal and not at all about the 138th. Not only did Vidal-Quadras made no secret at all of it
when we met yesterday, he also claimed the delegation had unanimously given him the mandate on the 7th of
October.
- But hey! I was at the meeting on October 7 and know very well what was said. I also know very well what
kind of attitude both me and Philippe Lamberts (the green MEP that I work with in the delegation) had.
It was definitely not close to what Vidal-Quadras tried to say in yesterday's meeting.
Philippe Lamberts protested fiercely against this false reality and pointed out that it was both unfair and
unprofessional of negotiators to behave like this and Vidal-Quadras thought that Lamberts were rude.
Naturally, he thought that he had not made the slightest mistake.
I backed up Lambert's by saying that I had exactly the same understanding of what the mandate of the
negotiators had been at the previous meeting. Eva-Britt Svensson (Left party, SE) did so too, but we were
unable to reach a substantive discussion on this point .
Lena Ek (Center party, SE) describes this discussion as we "mostly complained about procedural matters",
that description may account for her. She does not seem to care about designated negotiators actually
representing the mandate they received from the delegation, but thinks it's okay if they are running their own
race and says what they want to the Council.
The substantive discussion began with Catherine Trautmann (Social Democrat, FR), presented a proposal
which she felt would be the basis for further negotiations with the Council. Trautmann is the rapporteur on
the directive and one of the three negotiators so it was natural that she was talking.
She had earlier asked to submit proposals on the text of the delegation members via email, to be the basis for
this text. I could not see any trace of her to draw inspiration from what I and Philippe Lamberts had sent to
her (slightly revised version of Appendix 138), Trautmann instead presented another variation on the Council
and the Commission's basic texts.
At this point I began to fear that the outcome of this meeting, the delegation would be for Parliament to just
lay on it's back and let themselves be run over by the Council without even protesting. It brightened
considerably when Stavros Lambrinidis (Social Democrat, GR) took the floor and suggested a number of
changes in Trautmann's text.
They were presented only verbally so unfortunately I can not explain the precise steps of the discussion, but
the result was in all cases is the text now in its draft for the "trilogue" discussions that will happen tomorrow,
Thursday.
I supported Lambrinidis by saying that it sounded like a very interesting amendment and that I would love
to see them on paper. What we are doing is after all to write things that may have legal force in the form of
an EU directive. Then I think it is totally unacceptable that we as legislators should be expected to say yes or
no without even having seen the text of the letter.
But President Vidal-Quadras would not listen, he thought it was enough to take it orally. After a lot of pretty
chaotic discussions most of what Lambrinidis suggested survived, such as the wording "prior" and
"exceptional circumstances".
When the revised text had been read to President Vidal-Quadras had the opinion that we were ready and
that he had the delegation to negotiate with the Council on the basis of the spoken text. I and Lamberts and
even the Left, Eva-Britt Svensson, however, did not want to give a mandate until we at least had seen the text
written down. We said we would return with feedback today, when we had received text email.
Today, we have analyzed the text as best as we could in the short time that has been available. Of course, you
can not say anything definitive about whether the text will do so quickly and without access to lawyers, but
this afternoon me and Lamberts sent a email to Vidal-Quadras where we said we agree that the text meets the
was said at the meeting and we wish them well in Thursday's negotiations with the Council.
I stand by my preliminary assessment from this morning that this text is probably better than nothing,
although it obviously does not contain everything we would have liked.
It contains, as I said a "prior", and the more I think about it all the more fond I become of the statement that
the closures will only take place under "exceptional circumstances". No man can of course argue that it
would be something exceptional with someone being accused of file sharing. According to the IFPI itself it's
around 3 million people in Sweden alone dealing with it. wink
But I also insist that the assessment is very preliminary. In the current situation, I can not say whether this is
really a strong enough writing that I could vote for if it becomes the final version.
Thats nothing i have to answer right now, there is still more time for analys.
The next step is will be another meeting between Parliament negotiators and the Council of Ministers
tomorrow, Thursday. Then we'll see what happens and how it all unfolds from there. The next meeting of
Parliament's delegation will probably be in a few weeks.
What I can say with certainty is that I think this is a completely absurd way to develop legislation. Complex
legal texts to be presented orally during the calamitous circumstances for a President who behaves in a way
that never would be accepted in a normal Swedish student council.
There are an awful lot that could be improved in this process. Lena Ek and the Center will have to forgive,
but I think this handling of procedural issues is both appalling and dangerous.
But right now is what it is, and then we try to do as much benefit we can in the circumstances. There was no
one who said it would be easy.
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