[Advocacy Advisors] CETA [was Re: EU Monitoring Report - September 2014]

What happened? The consolidated text of the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA) was released last week. [9] It contains chapters on IPR and e-commerce and rules on data protection. It talks a lot about Digital Rights Management, a circumvention prohibition thereof and a prohibition on software that can be used to circumvent DRM. It also has an article on IPR enforcement (Article 18), which foresees the seizure of property on alleged infringers, including blocking of bank accounts and assets. This sounds a lot like ACTA (I’d say about 80 percent of the text is identical). It is also intriguing, because we still have not harmonised copyright and enforcement rules in the EU, raising the question on what grounds the Commission is negotiating this with Canada. There’s also a so-called “follow the money” approach for pursuing infringers who knowingly violate copyright law. They can be asked to pay compensations which would include alleged lost profits. What comes next? The major question here is, if this treaty is out of scope for the European Commission. If it touches upon policies which are not the exclusive competence of the EU, it would have to be ratified by the European Parliament, the Council and the parliaments of the 28 Member States. If it falls within EU law an okay from the Parliament and Council would be enough. It is also important in light of the talks on a similar EU-US trade agreement (TTIP). The negotiation logic in free trade agreements is that if you offer something to Canada, you’ll have to offer at least the same conditions to the USA.