ANTI-COUNTERFEITING TRADE AGREEMENT : US SENATE WOULD REJECT ACTA, MEPS TOLD.

The international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), signed in October 2011 mainly by advanced economies, would likely be rejected by the US Senate, a delegation of MEPs from the ALDE group visiting Washington has learned. During a meeting with the leading Senator on the dossier, Ron Wyden (Democrat, Oregon), the MEPs were told that most senators did not support the agreement, which has run into a firestorm of controversy in recent weeks as a grassroots opposition movement has mobilised millions against it. MEP Niccolo Rinaldi (Italy) told Europolitics information society, on 28 February at a press lunch, that the senators' opposition was motivated by the negative impact they thought the accord would have on social networking sites like Facebook. He also learned that the Obama administration did not plan to send the accord to the Senate for approval, claiming it was non-binding, "which was news to us". The European Commission, which negotiated the agreement, recently put ratification on hold by referring it to the EU Court of Justice for an opinion. ACTA, which covers both goods counterfeiting and online copyright infringements, is under fire in particular for requiring internet service providers to report suspected copyright infringements to the authorities.

EURO CRISIS, PNR, FREE TRADE

The ALDE delegation was led by Guy Verhofstadt (Belgium) and also included Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (Germany), Anneli Jaateenmaki (Finland) and Antonyia Parvanova (Bulgaria). They met with officials at the US Treasury, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), lawmakers on...