Tag Archives: ACTA

Opinion: How my life changed forever – 100 days in!

At the start of this year I was a Lib Dem from Yorkshire working and studying in London who according to some journalists was an “unknown” – although I was quite well known in certain Lib Dem circles, especially for my quiches! The resignation of Diana Wallis, as Lib Dem MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber changed all that.

In 2009 I was third on the Lib Dem list for Yorkshire and the Humber. When you are third on a regional list and the …

Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 13 Comments

European Parliament overwhelmingly rejects ACTA

The culmination of weeks of campaigning and lobbying against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) came this morning, as the European Parliament voted 478 to 39 to reject it, despite the fact that twenty-two member states, including the United Kingdom, had already signed it. As a result, the Agreement is now likely to become irrelevant without the support of European Union nations.

The Agreement had already been rejected by five Committees of the European Parliament, and despite attempts by Conservative MEPs to defer the vote, as urged by UNI MEI, a “global union for the Media, Entertainment and Art Industries”, …

Posted in Europe / International and News | Also tagged and | 9 Comments

Lib Dem MEPs help expose draft ACTA text

The secrecy surrounding Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has concerned me and many of my constituents as it has many MEPs. As a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, I met the European Commission in early March to discuss the unacceptable level of secrecy in which these negotiations are shrouded, and demanded that we in the European Parliament, as the only directly elected representatives of the public at European level, be given immediate access to the final draft of the consolidated negotiating text. You can view my question here.

Following severe criticism from myself and a number of my …

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  • Chloe
    Follow the link to his twitter account. It absolutely sums the resignation honours up. A medieval royal court. Andrew Neil on X: "Keir Starmer — ever a man...
  • Chris Cory
    I confess that I know less than I should about this whole topic but I sense that it will indeed shape the future and we should be talking about it rather more t...
  • Daniel Walker
    @Peter Martin "Many countries in the West are happy to import raw materials from Africa but put barriers in place to prevent them adding value. So for exampl...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    Tom is right, that we are lacking the story.I think there is a national story to build here, and it's around local focus and growth, which is exactly where we h...