The ACTA has thrown a lot of nonsense at us, citizens, for the last four years now. Not only the policies the agreement wants to impose are absurd from economic, social and cultural standpoints (if you’re aiming at any kind of progress or well-being); but also the whole process that we’ve been trying to deal with is made of such non-sense that it’s hard to make the citizens’ voice heard (and even less to make the citizen’s voice count — you know: free speech and democracy).

Lately, the European Parliament legal service has refused to provide a public analysis on ACTA, although it was aksed to do so by the European Parliament (people we elected to represent us at the EU level). The reason?

“Important trading partners of the EU, such as the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea and Switzerland are contracting parties to the ACTA agreement. Disclosure of the parts of the legal opinion under consideration dealing with questions 1, 2 and 3 would seriously interfere with the complex ratification procedures of the ACTA agreement and the EU’s relations with the other contracting parties, as it might prejudice the ratification procedures by these countries.”

(source, the excellent Ante on FFII ACTA’s blog)

So, let’s sum up.

The legal service won’t publish their analysis because it might influence the ratification process of other parties to the agreement; that means other than the EU.

So the EU Parliament will vote on ratification on a treaty without public analysis, because such an analysis would have influenced the US. Brilliant, if not sad.

For a quick analysis on how ACTA endangers Free Software growth, please read ACTA: threats to Free Software. Your comments on that are strongly welcome.