Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-04-Speech-4-013"
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"en.20000504.2.4-013"2
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"Mr President, I am pleased to see Parliament, in the form of Mrs Fourtou’s report, prepared to undertake an extensive campaign against counterfeiting and piracy within the internal market. The text gives an accurate outline of the extent of the damage and its catastrophic repercussions on the economies of our countries and also on the health and safety of our fellow citizens, since the phenomenon now involves sectors as potentially dangerous as medicines and car parts. We can therefore welcome this appeal for increased awareness and for a uniform mobilisation of resources across the board in order to limit and eventually curb this scourge.
While the Fourtou report does not appear to play down the significance of the damage, it does, however, appear to disregard the urgency requiring that an appropriate policy is implemented straight away. Reading this text gives the impression that Parliament is urging the Commission to consider with the utmost urgency the technical definition of the measures which should be implemented, whilst in this respect the counterfeiters are, as always, one step ahead in terms of technology. If it is appropriate to use any more sophisticated technology that might make counterfeiting and piracy more expensive and more difficult to engage in, then the fight we undertake should not neglect to use radical means, applicable immediately. Failing to do so would mean that our policies, however well intentioned, will be forever missing the boat.
The text is still particularly vague as to the measures to actually protect patents and intellectual property rights which it would like to see Member States adopting. Without such measures, crafty economic opportunists and seasoned technological plagiarists will continue to pass well-disguised theft off as innovation. Similarly, something is amiss when we are striving for a raft of protective measures, which would make it possible to put an immediate stop to the sale of these goods, while there are reasonable grounds for suspicion and when the only thing lacking is the time needed to furnish proof. In addition to all the necessary schemes intended to combat the sale of these fraudulent goods, however, it is essential to cut off the supply of these goods pouring into the single market, flouting all the principles which are supposed to regulate its operation.
And in order to do so, Parliament must agree to remove the veil of doctrine which blurs the vision of the great majority of its Members when it comes to incontrovertible evidence of the need to re-establish internal border controls within the Community. It would also have been wise to specify in some form other than the desperately vague paragraphs 31 and 34 exactly what obligations would be required of candidate countries on the subject. Finally, and this is certainly the most serious issue, what cooperation policy do Member States intend to implement as of now in order to fight not only against the fly-by-night street trader, but more especially against organised crime, which nowadays apparently is becoming the real beneficiary of this expanding sector of activity?
The Union for a Europe of Nations Group will vote in favour of this report, even though it represents only the first minimal step in a Community-wide policy in which each Member State must take hard and fast action, and urges Parliament to vote in favour of its amendments, which would make it possible to give the text much more force than it has at it stands."@en1
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