Criminal Sanctions disagreements

10.00 Arrive in the Parliament after a small detour because the chauffer goes to the wrong side of the river for my entrance. We are having a meeting on the voting list for Criminal Sanctions at 10.30 with others in the Group who have taken an interest. I have done my preferred list. On the way over I see Toine, who is the shadow for the sublect, walking in the opposite direction with Commissioner Kroes, which is bad news as it means he will not be joining us. We have our meeting and it seems that Ignasi, Marco and I have broadly similar thinking. The differences that we do have stem from the different ways legal systems work in different countries, which is half the problem with the criminal sanctions proposals. Anyway, we agree between ourselves and will take our line to Group tonight. I will see if I can find Toine before then as he is not going to like our conclusions and I regret that he was not present.

11.45 I head over to the hemicycle for votes. We are voting on payments today. There is to be an oral amendment to put a data protection bit in the resolution, providing that first we have rejected the amendment. This keeps it out of the directive and seems a good compromise. The ECON chair Pervench Beres is to move it and has the sense to let everyone know before the votes. The hard line civil liberties members of ALDE still ignore my voting list and vote for the amendment, but the amendment is rejected and then the oral amendment passed. It is a very small number of votes for just a big portfolio, because everything is voted en bloc, so the rapporteur does not get the amount of applause he deserves. We should have made them take 800 votes: then maybe they would have applauded more!

13.15 We have a photo-opp with cricket bats and balls, on the problems in Sri Lanka. This causes interest among continental media and so Sarah and Saj play cricket to show them (Sarah hits the ball too far and into a camera crew but fortunately the balls are soft).

14.00 We have a JURI extraordinary meeting on verification of credentials. This is all about ensuring everything is correct about new members papers etc. Sometimes it is not as straightforward who substitutes should be. There has been a court case in Italy over who should be the replacement for Di Pietro when he joined the Italian Government.

15.00 We have a press conference on payments.

16.00 Back to the office. I have a meeting at 4.30 with Sanchez Presado the rapporteur on damages actions. He has not been able to reach any agreement yet with the EPP. I agree with him some possible compromises and split votes and he goes off for another try.

17.00 Back to paperwork and voting lists and emails. I try to find Toine but do not succeed until just before the group meeting, by which time he has had an email of the voting preferences from this morning’s meeting. Needless to say he is not happy.

19.00 Group meeting. We get on to the criminal sanctions and Toine indicates his displeasure. I want to let the debate get underway before I intervene so I let Ignasi speak first from our side but he is preceded by our Bulgarian vice-chair who says there have been demonstrations in Bulgaria. The demonstrations concern the panic about the prospect of the directive criminalising individuals for private copying, but it is already pretty well unanimously agreed that will be taken out. When it is my turn I give a bit more explanation of the wider picture, the different conditions in member states, why it should not cover all intellectual property but only copyright and trademarks (as the most closely related to counterfeiting and piracy) and how we have come to a least bad compromise between ourselves on the available amendments. I think most are able to follow the arguments. We get to a vote and win our line reasonably comfortably. After Group I leave at 9.30 and the driver (a different one) gets lost again.