The Commission is seeking EU member states' permission to
negotiate new trade agreements with a list of specific countries,
including the US, Japan, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand. The aim of
the agreements will be the enforcement of intellectual property
rights and combating piracy.
The Commission wants to create the Anti Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement (ACTA), which will create "high-level international
framework that strengthens the global enforcement of intellectual
property rights and helps in the fight to protect consumers from
the health and safety risks associated with many counterfeit
products".
The permission of the EU member states is needed before such
agreements can be negotiated, and the Commission is now formally
seeking that permission.
The activity envisaged by the plan is more usually undertaken by
trade bodies such as the World Trade Organisation, the G8 group of
industrialised nations and the World Intellectual Property
Organisation (WIPO). A Commission statement, though, said that it
felt it needed more room to manoeuvre than those bodies
provided.
"We feel that the approach of a free-standing agreement gives us
the most flexibility to pursue this project among interested
countries," said a statement. "We fully support the important work
of the G8, WTO, and WIPO, all of which touch on intellectual
property rights enforcement. The membership and priorities of those
organisations simply are not the most conducive to this kind of
path breaking project."
The proposal of the new body highlights the worries of some
economies about the piracy threat posed by countries without
similar traditions of intellectual property rights enforcement.
"The EU is consistently pushing countries like China to enforce
anti-counterfeiting legislation and to toughen the legal penalties
for intellectual property theft," said the Commission statement.
"Closer coordination on international benchmarks can reinforce this
pressure."
ACTA is designed to create a common approach between member
nations in relation to the punishment of counterfeiting and piracy.
It may also plan to change the law in some member countries. One of
its aims is listed as "creating a strong modern legal framework
which reflects the changing nature of intellectual property theft
in the global economy".
The Commission said that the creation of the new body was
necessary to deal with new threats. It said that 130 million fake
products were seized at EU borders, an increase of 40% on the
previous year. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development said that trade in fake goods represented 2% of world
trade. It said that physical trade in counterfeit goods was worth
$200 billion a year.
