What do they think they are doing?? Not much more than a week ago we were demonstrating against European software patents in Brussels, shouting ‘this is not a banana republic’, only to be confronted with more banana tactics this week: apparently they (the council of ministers) tried AGAIN to put this up as an A-item on the agenda of the meeting of ministers of agriculture&fishery. This means that it (the council proposal about software patents) will most likely be ratified, without discussion (more info on this can be found on the ffii website, along with all the gory details about how democracy is a farce in Europe.

A couple of questions come to mind: first of all what do the ministers of agriculture&fisherey know about software patents? How can they be expected to know the consequences of their act of ratification?
But the most important question to me is: when will it end? When will Europe be a democracy, when will the voice of the parliament (and thus the people) be taken serious? My hope is that the new constitution (which by no means is perfect) will bring this democracy. I hope the constitution will finally bring an end to the back-rooms and secret decisions, an end to the unlimited influence of multinationals on European regulations. I mean, come on, THIS IS NOT A BANANA REPUBLIC!

(so vote YES on the constitution, vote YES on democracy)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2005 at 12:17 and is filed under English, Europe, Science 'n stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.