EU Parliament Wants China To Join ACTA, Even As It May Reject It?

from the politics-as-theater dept

"regrets that China has not taken part in the negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)"

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We've written a few times that the end goal behind ACTA and TPP is to put in place frameworks by the US and Western Europe for certain things, and then pressure the key developing nations to join in based on the framework that has already been established. That is, let the US and Europe set the rules... and then pressure Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) countries to "join" later, when they can no longer influence the rules. It's not hard to see how the plan is really about looking for ways to stifle those up-and-coming economies. Of course, the end result will actually be the opposite. Since those countries won't be saddled with overly restrictive laws (hopefully), there will be interesting opportunities for businesses.And, of course, among the BRIC countries, none is seen as important as China. Thus, the real goal behind TPP and ACTA isn't just to set up this framework around things like IP (TPP covers much more), but then to get China to sign on to support that framework. Of course, China, whose leaders are much more savvy than the west likes to give them credit for, have made it pretty clear that they have no interest in signing up for ACTA or TPP.And yet... the EU Parliament is already trying to put pressure on China to sign on to ACTA . Yes, the same EU Parliament that has been moving closer and closer to rejecting ACTA itself has just passed a resolution to scold China for not signing up :While the overall resolution covered a number of other trade issues concerning the EU and China -- meaning that those who voted for it may have been focused on other issues, rather than just this one -- there apparentlya vote specific to this line. MEP Christian Engstrom, who brought this to attention, notes that this should be a warning sign that, despite strong momentum against ACTA in the EU Parliament, it could still pass.

Filed Under: acta, bric, china, eu parliament, tpp