Accord commercial anti-contrefaçon (ACAC)

Avis sur les négociations en cours au sein de l’Union européenne pour un accord commercial anti-contrefaçon (ACAC)

The EDPS has adopted an opinion on current negotiations by the European Union of a multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) aimed at strengthening the enforcement of intellectual property rights and to combat counterfeiting and piracy.

In the light of the information reported about ACTA, the EDPS has concerns about the potential incompatibility between envisaged measures and data protection requirements.

The EDPS makes a number of recommendations in view of providing guidance to the European Commission on the privacy and data protection related aspects that should be considered in the ACTA negotiations. He stresses in particular that:

• the fight against piracy on the Internet should not include large scale monitoring of Internet users through the use of "three strikes Internet disconnection policies" or "graduated response" schemes;
• other less intrusive means to fight piracy on the Internet must be investigated  or, at least, envisaged policies should be performed at a more limited scope, notably through targeted ad hoc monitoring;
• appropriate safeguards must be applied to all international data transfers in the context of ACTA, which should take the form of binding agreements between EU senders and third country recipients;
• a public and transparent dialogue must be established on ACTA.