The European Parliament's committee on international trade in Brussels backed (19 votes in favour, 12 against) a proposal by S&D member David Martin to reject the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
The Parliament's rapporteur on ACTA, David Martin MEP, said:
"I welcome the result of today's vote. I am pleased that the committee has acknowledged the problems I have identified in my report and has followed my recommendation to reject ACTA.
ACTA is not the right treaty with which to address commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy and with this vote we have gone one step closer to Parliament killing off ACTA in the EU. We now expect the Parliament's plenary to strongly back this at the beginning of July."
S&D spokesperson on international trade, Bernd Lange MEP added:
"We are ready to start working with all the political groups on better ways to protect copyright and the creativity of EU companies and manufacturers without endangering fundamental rights. However, we first need to close the unfortunate ACTA chapter."
Source: S&D Group at European Parliament
