It was a jump to the left when socialist David Martin advised that “the European Parliament cannot guarantee adequate protection for citizens' rights in the future under ACTA.” Now there’s a step to the right as Mme Gallo, described by the IPtegrity blog as “rights-holders sweetheart and Sarkozy-ite”, voted to delay the Legal Affairs’ recommendation. She claims that she needs to incorporate the views of the European Data Protection Supervisor as published in his own Opinion – even though the EDPS opinion runs counter to the known view of Gallo’s rightist EPP grouping.
Commentators see this as a delaying tactic: Gallo and the right wing of the European Parliament are ‘officially’ in favor of ACTA. “What could be going on is an attempt to manoeuvre the Parliament into delaying the final ACTA vote, to give the rights-holder lobby more time to gather support,” writes Monica Horten in IPtegrity. “There may also be a view that if the vote is delayed, public opinion will move onto something else and those MEPs who are swinging votes will be persuaded that it’s ok to support ACTA.” It is a standard practice when legislators come up against public opinion: stop, delay and then try again later at a time when activists have have begun to suffer from what Rick Falkvinge has called ‘protest fatigue’.
Falkvinge, an anti-ACTA activist and founder of The Pirate Party, has warned against counting votes in accordance with party lines. There seems to be a majority against ACTA, he says. “However, this majority against ACTA is not like other majorities, which are predictable and stable.” MEPs are not so tightly bound as their national parliament colleagues. “While the party whip exists, it is mostly of the fun kind. A recommendation, if you like. Deviations from the declared party line is not only common but expected in pretty much every vote. So even though the party groups have declared their party lines, this has no effective binding force on the people doing the actual button-pressing, and it’s the tally of them that counts in the end.”
Depending on where you stand, all is yet to be won or lost on ACTA.