[pp.int.general] La Quadrature du Net: Amendment 138 dead by lack of courage of the Parliament

[Amelia Andersdotter]

2009/10/23 Nicolas Sahlqvist <nicco77 at gmail.com>

>
> Phew, that took some time.. We still need to find out details how this will
> affect our issues in practice, who is up for making a analyze of the 272
> pages Lisbon Treaty?
>
> http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/full_text/index_en.htm
>
>
This is how I see Lisbon affecting the Pirate Party and related issues:

As opposed to the consolidated Nice treaty, consolidated Lisbon is actually
easily to interpret (try reading both treaties and you'll see what i mean!),
which is good for transparency (even though neither of them are light
reading of course).

The Lisbon treaty makes every decision procedure a co-decision procedure
which is basically good for PPs, as we're aiming for parliament.

More specifically, the Lisbon treaty gives power to the parliament even on
issues relating to DG justice, security and freedom, which is good.
Previously, the power to decide over these issues has resided solely with
the Council and they're a bunch of muppets. It means we have larger chances
of affecting say, the ECC that was mentioned earlier.

Lisbon, more than the constitutional treaty, lets power reside with the
Council, though. And the Council is very difficult for us to get at: what
would benefit the Pirate Parties most at this point is actually a strong
supranational (almost) federal EU, because as regulators it is as a
parlament (supranational organisation) that we can do the most good.

And even with Lisbon, the parliament will remain a largely corrupt
organisation for at least another 5-10 years: it is where member state
governments send unpopular politicians to have them out of the way, and that
creates a weak parliament without the capacity to assume the role of a
responsible regulator it should (i mean parliament as a whole, not
individual MEPs: there's plenty good people in parliament as well).

Lisbon will also make it easier for the EU to formally expand their scope of
power: what PPs must do in relation to this is make surethat such an
expansion is transparent and open. One of the biggest problems the last 6-7
years is that the EU has been meddling kind of outside their scope, which
means intra-community multilateral arrangements that are more closed than
they would be if they went through pure Community channels (Prüm convention
is a perfect example of this)

And while it would be desirable that the parliament was given more formal
power of EUs external trade relations, facts is that the parliament already
has to approve of international treaties relating to intellectual property
rights (art 133 subparagraph 6 perhaps, something like that, Nice). One of
the biggest challenges for the PPs will be to use the fact that the
Commission wishes to enhance Commission-Parliament cooperation to their
advantage and trying this way to gain access to as much information as
possible before trade agreements are struck.

Unsurprisingly, it remains urgent for PPs to keep in touch with their local
governments, demand information on Council work for them, and also try to
gain access to local parliaments in order to change member state policies at
member state level.

Obviously there's a lot more to be said on the Lisbon Treaty and it will
change much more than I've listed above, but the above is what I see as
concrete things the Lisbon treaty can be "used for" to our advantage.

Another problem I see currently is that the EU is turning towards
nationalist-conservative in many member states: a reinitiated treaty process
at this stage would not turn out better than the Lisbon treaty, sadly, but
probably institutionalise member state power (multilateral cooperation)
instead of supranational power (EU), and PPs, as I see it, really do not
benefit from the Counsilium acquiring more power.


-- 
Amelia Andersdotter
Kommunikationansvarig UPF
Lissabon-MEP
+46 738436779
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