Text tabled : A7-0204/2012

  Mário David (PPE), in writing. – (PT) The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) seeks to solve real problems that have been worsening in recent years: the international trade in pirated and counterfeit goods is estimated to be worth over EUR 250 billion. However, there have been some doubts about ACTA’s scope, in particular as regards offences in the digital environment and the role of Internet service providers in identifying these offences. The rapporteur highlights some of these doubts, adding that ACTA will have to include countries like India, China and Brazil, where the most serious breaches of intellectual property rights currently occur. I voted against ACTA and for the report. However, I think it is absolutely necessary immediately to launch a wide-raging debate about a new agreement, involving so-called ‘civil society’. This should use the ACTA text as its basis, but should obviously revise the part about protecting intellectual property rights in the digital environment, as the only way of protecting our most innovative industrial sector. Why not spilt ACTA into two and immediately start the legal process of debating and adopting the chapters other than the ‘digital environment’? We would save a lot in terms of time and efficiency.