ACTA Week in EU Parliament Committees

Several committees in the European Parliament will be giving their opinions on ACTA this week

This week a number of committees in the European Parliament will debate ACTA and vote on opinions that recommend if the parliament should give its consent to  the agreement or not.

The final decision on ACTA will be taken by the full parliament in a vote that is currently scheduled for the beginning of July (but which may be moved), so the opinions of the various committees are not formally binding in themselves. They are, however, an important indication about the possible majority in the vote in plenary, and the outcome of the committee opinions will influence the political debate in the parliament leading up to the final vote.

The committees that are about to decide on opinions are (from the Act-on-Acta campaign page):

ITRE (Industry, Research and Energy)
Thursday May 31: vote on MEP Andersdotter‘s Opinion on ACTA

JURI (Legal Affairs)
Wednesday May 30: exchange of views on the draft opinion
Thursday May 31: vote on MEP Gallo’s Opinion on ACTA

LIBE (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs)
Thursday May 31: vote on MEP Droutsas’ Opinion on ACTA

DEVE (Development)
Monday June 4: vote on MEP Zahradil’s Opinion on ACTA

Once the side committees have all voted on their opinions, they will be sent to INTA (International Trade), which is the lead committee. INTA will take the opinions of ITRE, JURI, LIBE, and DEVE into consideration, and then come up with its own recommendation as to if the parliament should give its consent to ACTA or not:

INTA (International Trade)
Thursday June 21: vote on MEP Martin’s Report on ACTA

All the committee meetings will be web streamed live.

Read more about the upcoming votes at: La Quadrature, ACTA-bloggen