On Saturday 07 May 2005 18:17, Anne Wilson wrote: > > HarM, I can never get my head around politics. When I lobbied my MEP I was > told that parliament would not accept a rubber-stamp situation, but I'm no > longer convinced that they can actually do anything. What, in your > opinion, would make parliament stronger? > > (I know we said no politics on the list, but since this is very much a > linux issue, I hope I'll be forgiven.) > > Anne
Well the parliament did show it's teeth last year, in refusing the proposed Italian commissioner because he had certain "views" on working women and homosexuality. They need a democratic basis to work on though, something which doesn't come easy especially because national politicians dislike sharing their existing power. One good thing about the new constitution is, is that it makes it much more clear where which power is. Defacto the parliament will get more power than it has now and democratic rules are institutionalised. Important is that competences are set: The EU will take care of competition- and trade- policies whilst education and health-care will be solely a national competence. With the new constitution civilians can get a matter on the agenda by gathering a minimum of a million signatures, member states can leave the union at will, more EU decisions will need a qualified majority to be taken and national parliaments get more oportunities to stop or change a taken decision. As to software patents, I think we have to keep hammering at our MEP's, explaining to them that we will be selling out our software industry to the USA by accepting this patent mess. There aren't many MEP's that even have the slightest notion what software realy is and that a computer and "Windows" aren't the same thing. These digi-ignorants are being "advised" by lobbies from the IT industries like IBM and Microsoft and have to be made aware that there is an enormous reservoir of small IT businesses in Europe that will be pushed out of the market by these patents. At the very least get registered at http://www.ffii.org if you're against the proposed patent legislation...or do more there;) The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit association registered in several European countries, which is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 500 members, 1,200 companies and 75,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing. -- Good luck, HarM
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