EDRI welcomes the creation of a Human Rights Agency within the European Union, adopted by the Council of the European Union on December 12th 2003.

In his opening address to the UN general assembly on 21 September 2004, UN General Secretary Kofi Annan stated that not since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 has the pro­tection of human dignity, liberty and equity been under such pressure. As the use of Information and com­munication technologies increases in all fields and sectors, and as the "information society" evolves and de­velops, human rights are being particularly challenged by more invasive technology, greater control and surveillance, and more visible inequality.

The Dutch EU Presidency of the EU had published a rather thin paper on spam. The Presidency 'sees spam as a priority issue' and is looking for 'short-term practical measures and quick wins'. The paper will be on the agenda of the Telecommunications Council on 9 December 2004.

The paper mentions that the Commission has created a contact network of spam enforcing bodies in the EU called CNSA. Also, the French and Dutch responsible authorities (CNIL and OPTA) have prepared a co-operation protocol, that is expected to enter into force before the end of 2004. A questionnaire was sent out by the European Commission to industry and government in October 2004. The results show that the difference in implementation of the enforcement of the spam-ban causes lots of problems. The paper mentions a large variety in financial penalties, from 145 euro per spam message to an administrative fine of 450.000 euro. Precisely one sentence is dedicated to the most hotly debated controversy caused by Article 13 of the Privacy Directive of 2002, whether the spam-ban only applies to natural persons, or also to business recipients. The Presidency offers no solution or recommendation for this problem.

On Thursday 2 December, the European Parliament adopted the report from the Dutch PSE rapporteur Edith Mastenbroek on the goals and funding of the Safer Internet Plus Programme. Parliament has decided to dedicate 45 million Euro to the program, of which 20,05 million are to be spent in the first 2 years, 2005 and 2006. Since the amendments were already agreed with the Commission and the Council, the report is adopted at first reading and will enter into force on 1 January 2005.

The programme is divided into four action lines and the budget is divided along these lines:

1.  Fighting against illegal content (25-30% of the budget) by the means of hotlines. To ensure that the Programme is effective, hotlines are required in all Member States and candidate countries. Currently, hotlines exist in 13 of the 25 Member States.

The EU's Court of First Instance will decide between 18 and 20 December whether to suspend the Commission's sanctions against Microsoft. In March 2004 Microsoft got a record fine of 497 million euro after a five-year investigation by the Competition Commissioner into Microsoft's business practice. The Commission also ordered Microsoft to offer a version of Windows without a bundled media player and to share more technical information with server rivals. Microsoft paid the fine but the cash is being kept in an escrow account until Microsoft's appeal has been settled.

According to the Commission's March 2004 ruling Microsoft's illegal conduct has enabled it to acquire a dominant position in the market for work group server operating systems and has significantly weakened competition on the media player market. The dominant position has grave consequences for consumers: "The ongoing abuses act as a brake on innovation and harm the competitive process and consumers, who ultimately end up with less choice and facing higher prices".

Advocates of open source tools that use geographical data (GIS) are concerned about a new directive proposed by the European Commission on the use of governmental geospatial data. The INSPIRE Directive, adopted by the Commission in July 2004, aims to establish a spatial information infrastructure in Europe. It covers 30 broad types of data, such as (the location and the 3D descriptors of) buildings, forests, rivers, mountains, transport networks, all kinds of territorial definitions (names, postcodes, population and distribution of species) and all kinds of environmental indicators, such as occurrence of epidemics, pollution etc.

Critics say the consultation process has been unrepresentative, and fear that the proposed directive gives too much power to government data collection and licensing agencies. They argue that the directive imposes

The Dutch presidency of the EU has launched a new 5 year programme for Justice and Home Affairs. The previous five year plan, the Tampere Programme, was launched under the Finnish presidency of the EU. The new 'Hague Programme' was discussed at the Brussels European Council on 4 and 5 November and will be presented by Dutch prime minister Jan-Peter Balkenende to the European Parliament tomorrow, 18 November 2004.

The programme focuses on the current tendency of considering illegal migration a 'cross-border problem', along with terrorism and organised crime. Making reference to the attacks on 11 September 2001 in the U.S., and on 11 March 2004 in Madrid, it states 'a new urgency' for the security of the EU and its member states.

The means by which the EU Council hopes to achieve this security have

The Polish government has announced today it can not support the proposal from the EU Council for a Software Patents directive, since it is too vague, and leaves too much room for patents on pure software and business methods. This means there is no majority in the Council anymore to formally ratify the agreement that was reached on 18 May 2004. On 1 November 2004 the voting-procedure in the EU Council was modified to allow the new Member States to have equal amounts of votes. With the Polish 'NO', the Council will have to re-negotiate the draft directive once more within the Council, before being able to present it to the European Parliament for a second reading.

The text was already very problematic, due to growing political differences between government representatives of member states and

The European Commission has opened a consultation on the establishment of an EU Fundamental Rights Agency. This consultation follows the decision taken by the European Council in December 2003 to extend the mandate of the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, based in Vienna, to become a Fundamental Rights Agency.

The consultation addresses all non-governmental organisations protecting human rights and all persons involved in the development of protecting fundamental rights in the EU. The deadline expires on 17 December 2004. A proposal for a regulation to establish a Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union will be presented by the Commission in the course of 2005.

EU consultation on fundamental rights (deadline 17.12.2004)
http://europa.eu.int/comm/justice_home/news/consulting_public/fundamen...