A record breaking lobby scandal

New Europe, 10.04.11 The links between the European Commission and lobbyists took a more blatant turn, when they appointed a record industry lobbyist, Maria Martin-Prat, as Head of Unit I, Directorate General Internal Market, dealing in copyright and enforcement issues. She will be coordinating the revision of the 2004/48/EG directive and ACTA. Prior to this, she was Deputy General Counsel and Director of Legal Policy and Regulatory Affairs for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), where she was responsible for, “management of industry-related regulatory issues, including competition compliance, in addition to her longstanding role in directing global legal policy for IFPI. “ She worked for IFPI whilst “on leave from the European Commission”. Martin-Prat takes a hard line on copyright protection, even to arguing that people should not be allowed to break copyright protection on media you buy, even if there is no breaking of copyright. She also argued against citizens being allowed to copy media they own. Swedish Pirate MEP, Christian Engstrom and Dutch Liberal MEP, Marietje Schaake, have tabled a question asking; “Does the Commission not see any problems in recruiting top civil servants from special interest organisations, especially when being put in charge of dossiers directly related to their former employers? If not, why not? “Does the Commission feel that such an appointment would help to build confidence with the European Parliament and the general public that the Commission can be trusted to handle copyright-related issues in a fair and balanced manner?” On his blog, Engstrom was furious, “Welcome to the European Union, where the big business lobby organizations are calling most of the shots at the Commission, and where citizens are just seen as a nuisance to be ignored. I guess the only real news is that they don’t even bother to try to hide it any more.” Quite.