EU Commissioner Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By EU Parliament

and (european) politicians wonder about people's disillusionment with politics and lack of identification with the european union.

The commission needs to be neutered before the EU can be considered truly democratic. The fact that this guy can come straight out and say he's going to ignore court rulings and the democratic will of the elected MEPs with no fear of reprisals, because he's not elected, yet he can hold so much power ... it's sick.

Sadly the parliament is essentially a powerless organ by design. The problem is that the european commission accumulates both executive power and most of the legislative power, where the later should lie with parliament.

The end result is that the parliament is basically a farcical attempt to give the appearance of democratic legitimacy to the EU legislative process, but the farce is transparent enough that it just ends up tainting the public perception of the EU institutions.

There are political reasons for this arrangement of course, but I don't want to turn this into (more of) a rant. [EDIT: I end up going into that in this other post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4161285]

Since I know techdirt always reports aggressively in favour of internet freedom I read the direct quotes first and the techdirt commentary afterwards. From just the quotes, Karel De Gucht doesn't seem to be saying anything underhanded, just that if parliament doesn't ratify ACTA it will be modified (presumably toned down?) and resubmitted.

I don't think techdirt's message "The european government is a corrupt puppet!" is supported by the evidence in this article. Personally the fact that every committe which has reviewed ACTA has advised against it gives me hope.

We clearly need to rebuild European Institutions from the ground up.

I'm fully in favor of the European Union as a federal state but to achieve this it is mandatory for the European institutions to stop relying on country representatives or people who were just nominated and rely instead on elected people (and their representatives i.e. a prime minister for the European parliament for example), like in any proper democracy.

It is also a clear sign that despite all the efforts put out in the last few years, associations and companies that are willing to protect Internet freedom are not spending enough money and energy on actually doing it. Not nearly as much as the dying copyrighted and closed content industry anyway.