Apple has been accused of being too tough on mobile phone operators who sell the iPhone. Operators have complained to the European commission about it.

Very few operators have dared talk about the issue with their names in
public. One of the few that has done is the chief executive of Tele2, one of the leading Swedish mobile companies. Tele2 sells the iPhone on contract at prices starting around the equivalent of £40 a month

Mats Granryd, the mobile company's boss, said this week that he has "had enough" of Apple. "It would be fantastic if people stopped buying Apple's products. It is extremely difficult for us to earn money on Apple's products."

"I hope the 'apple goes rotten'. It is really difficult to do business with
them," he told a technology conference in Sweden..

He is the most prominent figure to have spoken publicly but a number of European carriers have, in confidence, called on European regulators to look at the contracts Apple strikes with them, claiming the contracts violate competition laws.

The European operators claim Apple squeezes out other handset makers by the conditions they place on operators. At the moment the complaints are highly confidential, according to the New York Times, which has recently looked at the issue at a pan-European level, and formal protests have not yet been entered. But French operators are said to be in the vanguard of the complaints, though other countries may also be involved, according to the New York Times.

The commission is not obliged to act until a formal complaint has been brought. So it may be that operators - under the guise of confidentiality - are seeking to put pressure on the American company by leaking through the media of a possible challenge Apple could face if it doesn't "mend its ways". The commission is said to be hesitant to intrude on such a dynamic sector

Apple's spokesman says the company complies with EU and local laws.

European operators say Apple's conditions, which do not appear to apply to US operators, are tougher on smaller European operators and are such that it makes it difficult for other handset firms to compete with Apple.

One of the key complaints appears to be the quotas Apple imposes. Each operator gets a quota of iPhones that it has to sell each period.

If the figure is not achieved, the operator has to pay Apple back for the handsets it did not sell. This is not a problem at the moment - with iPhones flying off the shelves at an unprecedented rate - but the complaints the commission has heard centre on the allegation that most companies' marketing budget being spent on the iPhone, in order to avoid that potential financial penalty.

Another problem is that, while operators feel obliged offer the latest iPhone at the same price, Apple charges the operator more for each latest iteration of the iPhone. gradually squeezing operator profits.

It is not clear what the commission will do next, says the New York Times. If a complaint went ahead - and if the commission has the appetite to open a case, and there is a case to make - it could end up with Apple being fined ten percent of its turnover. But such an outcome is just a remote possibility at the moment..

Not all operators agree that the negative picture is uniquely one that
pertains to Apple - Nokia could be just as bad when it dominated the mobile phone market - and some operators say the company has become a little less arrogant since the death of Steve Jobs and the recent rise of Samsung in the smartphone stakes. Apple's shares have, after all, fallen more than a third since last September.

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Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

The European parliament is making life tougher for car manufacturers. It has already set rules requiring carmakers to reach a sales weighted average of CO2 emissions of 130gm/km for new cars from 2015.

This week, an influential parliamentary committee voted to implement a tougher limit of 95gm of CO2 per kilometre for 2020, and made the recommendation to set tougher rules still for 2025.

What's more, the European parliament wants to crack down on car makers' testing methods that allow them to post what one study* alleges to be manipulated figures for fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. These "massaged" figures make their models appear more appealing to customers and put the cars in a lower tax bracket than might otherwise have been the case. (Since many cars are taxed on the basis of their CO2 emissions.)

The proposed solution - rigorous EU-wide standardisation of testing methods - would make it even more challenging for car makers to achieve the stricter CO2 emissions goals being proposed at the same time.

The European parliament's Industry Committee's decisions have to pass through several other European parliament committees and the full parliament, and then be approved by the member states. But it may be significant that the Industry Committee is usually the most industry friendly and "green" sceptical body in the European parliament. Votes that it passes that favour greening the economy are likely to pass the other committees with even greater probability.

On the member state side, Germany, protective of the challenges facing its makers of large cars, may resist the legislation. But, if it lacks other countries' support, it is likely to be outvoted in the Council of Ministers - the voting forum of member states - when the legislation gets that far this year or next.

The report that alleges "manipulation of figures" for emissions finds that fuel consumption - and therefore CO2 emissions - is, in some models, an astonishing 50% higher than the figures carmakers officially claim and which appear in their promotional material.

That is because the tests that measure fuel use doesn't look at real world conditions, but are carried out in special, favourable conditions. For instance, the car makers tape over cracks in doors and grilles to reduce air resistance, overinflate the tyres, disconnect the alternator to prevent the car battery from charging while tests are carried out, push the brake pads fully into the calipers to reduce rolling resistance, The tests are carried out at high altitude on specially-constructed smooth racing tracks, which gives lower fuel usage statistics. Finally the cars when tested are not run with their air conditioning or car stereo on, both of which increase fuel consumption. The result, say MEPs, is often a rude shock to car buyers, who find their fuel costs far exceed what they had been led to believe by car manufacturers.

The EU hopes to follow a standardised international procedure being worked out by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

So what is the problem? The EU puts forward the usual arguments: that the legislative challenges the EU throws up forces manufacturers - not just of cars - into greater innovations of efficiency and thus ultimately makes them more competitive on the world market, as well as producing better products for consumers. But you do wonder. The European car makers' association ACEA says customers' responses may be hard to predict. Even if a car with new technology might be cheaper to run once on the road, its initial sales price, boosted by having new technology built in, might be too high - and the customer may then choose to stick with his old car or buy a polluting, old second hand car. And that leaves no one any better off.

Looking at the bigger picture, there is the argument that as long as India and China keep increasing their emissions, the restrictions put on European manufacturers may not make a huge difference to saving the planet - and that European manufacturers will thus be pointlessly handicapped when facing countries that do not wear self-imposed environmental hair shirts.

All this at a time when Europe is suffering the worst economic crisis in a generation.


*Mind the Gap

-------------------------
Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

Edited: 27 March 2013 at 03:25 PM by View from Brussels Moderator

Google is under fire from the European Union's 27 national data protection authorities. Reason; the search engine giant has failed to modify its controversial confidentiality laws, which it introduced in March 2012.

The French data protection authority, CNIL (Commission Nationale de L'informatique et des Libertes, the national commission of digital freedoms) has been taking the leading role in a bid to apply penalties (of an unspecified kind) unless Google pretty promptly starts implementing changes recommended by the European privacy authorities to protect Google users' privacy. Google is, by far, the most popular search engine in Europe, responsible for 80 percent of searches. It is even more popular in Europe than in the US, where Google is responsible for only 65 percent of searches.

The background to the spat with Europe's data protection agencies is that, in March 2012, Google combined all the separate user agreements pertaining to all its various services (Gmail, Youtube, Google plus) into a single agreement. According to CNIL and other data protection authorities, this change, carried out for commercial reasons, violated European laws on privacy, which are pretty strict by international standards.

The data protection authorities issued a warning to Google on 16 October last year and gave the American search giant four months to respond. A list of 69 questions was sent to Google's headquarters asking precisely what measures were being taken to protect customer confidentiality. Questions ranged from the length of time Google stored customer data and the level of control users had to restrict the collection of information about them. The European data protection authorities - who together form a group called the G29 - also suggested that Google allow customers to identify themselves on some services while remaining anonymous on others, if they so wished.

On Monday 18 February, the deadline being passed, the French regulator said it would set up a further enquiry as Google had not yet responded to its concerns. For its part, Google says it had already responded to CNIL on 8 January with a list of measures taken to allay European concerns.

To be fair to Google, the streamlining of Google services into one integrated system makes life easier for users. But the advantages are arguably even greater for Google. The pooling of data across its various service as it boosts its advantages when selling online ads, the company's big earner in return for which it provides its extensive range of free services.

For example, the GPS position detected by your Android smartphone (Android being heavily tied in with one's Gmail address, possession of which is a prerequisite for using Android) combined with your search history, can lead to "better" targeting of Google's online advertisements.

In the intensely competitive duke out taking place between Google internet service giants such as Amazon and Facebook, such a commercial advantage must be tempting to hold on to for as long as possible. And Google knows that its services, funded by this advertising, are much appreciated by the public.

So it will be interesting to see Google's next move.

-------------------------
Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

The European commission is hoping for a revolution in European railway travel, an opening up of protected state monopolies to allow train companies from any one part of the European Union to run services in any other part.

The legislation is called the fourth railway package and the expected start date of this railway service "big bang" - provided it's passed by the European parliament - is 2019. In a speech earlier this week, transport commissioner Siim Kallas talked of the single market in rail, hoping to create an integrated European railway network where trains "would be able to run freely from Rotterdam to Genoa, from Paris to Bratislava, and from Warsaw to Marseille".

France's SNCF would be competing head to head with Germany's Deutsche Bahn, as well as any number of smaller operators, both national and private, for point to point destinations, much as Europe's airlines - think Ryanair or Air Berlin - do today. The single market in air travel which has given cheap flights to all points of the European compass is widely regarded as one of the EU's best loved and most popular "successes". Although it may not be environmentally sustainable. And maybe the EU is hoping for a similar fillip at a time, when as never before, the EU's legitimacy is coming under question

Siim Kallas cited rail travel is the environmental, efficient mode of travel of the future - but one that needed investment - and said the alternative was a Europe whose trunk roads were clogged with pollution-spewing heavy trucks. Which Europe did we want? he said dramatically. The environmental benefits of a railway network running on electricity generated from low carbon energy sources could be considerable. But rail has a long way to go to compete with road services. Only about 6% of travel journeys in Europe are by rail. There are 5 million kilometres of road, only 200,000 km of railways.

To help the liberalisation process along, the reforms presented in the fourth package were several. There would be a common EU-wide certification process, where trains and rolling stock would be certified by a single one-stop shop EU wide safety authority. At the moment, this process is carried out on a national basis.

The idea is to cite authorisation costs and allow trains to run more easily on other national networks. The separate capacities of managing tracks and running trains will also be forced apart. These deregulations have already been carried through in Sweden and the UK, but these reforms could see big changes to the nature of train travel on the continent, where unbundling is rare and where pride in large state-owned travel behemoths like France's SNCF is very great. However, the reforms did not go quite as far as the liberalisation supporters in Brussels led by Kallas would have wished.


After furious lobbying from Berlin - and Deutsche Bahn is Europe's largest train operator - unbundling infrastructure and train operation will not be mandatory. A compromise has been struck to enable Germany to keep its integrated model. The infrastructure, passenger and cargo services can still be organised into single holding companies, provided they separate management and financing. This has led to an outcry from rail freight companies, who worry that incumbents will be able to dominate the market. Critics might say it is the same monopolistic approach that some countries have played in the telecoms industry. But in a Europe of 27 nations, lobbying pressure comes from all sides, and in a way this was largely a victory for the single market approach usually favoured by northern countries like Britain. Some compromise with Germany was probably inevitable.

-------------------------
Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

The EU is drafting a proposal to phase out the hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases that act as refrigerants in the world's refrigerators and car air conditioning systems.

Many HFCs are very potent greenhouse gases, up to 20,000 times better per molecule at trapping the earth's heat than carbon dioxide.
Ironically, HFCs, when they came on the market 20 years ago. were touted as saviours of the planet. In the 1980s scientists discovered the ozone hole over the Antarctic.

Further, this hole had been caused by the depletion of ozone, or O3, by chlorofluorocarbons, used in refrigerators, air conditioners and as aerosol propellants. The international community acted for once with a sense of great purpose and unity, and the Montreal Protocol of 1987 regulated the phaseout of the dangerous CFCs.

It has arguably been the most successful environmental treaty ever, and the earth's ozone layer is now reckoned to be recovering. The world community then looked for a replacement. In came the HFCs which did no harm to the ozone layer. But they were greenhouse gases all the same, just like the now banned CFCs, whose lingering presence in the atmosphere contributes 10% of the overall warming caused by greenhouse gases.

HFCs' contribution is smaller than that, because they have been on the market for a shorter time. But there is still a threat, says the Commission. Albeit a small threat, for now: according to a report by the University of Karlsruhe, HFCs currently contribute to the global warming equivalent of 1 per cent of the world's CO2 emissions. But emissions are growing from this small base, by up to 10% a year.

At the same time, the world aims to cut its regular CO2 emissions drastically. The EU has pledged a 90% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. In such a scenario, HFC emissions could make up a bigger proportion of greenhouse gas emissions by mid century since other greenhouse gas emissions would have dropped. One of the reasons for some HFCs' potency is their long half-life in the atmosphere of 140 years.

Car drivers in hot climates can relax, though, The EU is not banning air conditioning itself. There are substitutes. According to the Michael Kauffeld, a professor of refrigeration technology at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, there are substitutes for HFCs as refrigerants. Dimethyl ether, iso-butane. ammonia, water, CO2. Indeed, most new domestic refrigerators currently employ "low global warming" substitutes for HFC. But the figure varies widely from sector to sector. For industrial air conditioning systems sold today, the figure is only 25%. Kauffeld maintains that the complete phaseout of HFCs is possible in 20 technology sectors by 2020.

The Commission's aim - more modest than Kauffeld's - is to cut HFC use in most applications to about a fifth of today's output and ban it completely in some applications, such as the air conditioning units used in road vehicles and trains.

The draft proposal is expected to be published by the European Commission in early November. Scores of lobbyists from air conditioning manufacturers have signed up to the EU register of lobbyists in the last year. They will be arguing you have to look at safety, efficiency and cost considerations. Some of the substitutes are flammable. EPEE, the European association of refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat pump manufacturers, argues that "many local and national building codes are still severely restricting the use of flammable and even mildly flammable substances." Along with manufacturers' liability, this is one of the "main hurdles" against alternatives being implemented. However, prof Kauffeld argues you can design around these issues.

Another argument against new HFC rules may well be that, while cutting emissions is all very good, unless the rest of the world cuts its HFC output too, there will be no point in Europe going it alone. But in fact Connie Hedegaard, the Environment Commissioner, has pointed to the need for a global phasedown of HFC gases "as soon as possible" and hopes to work through the Montreal Protocol.

-------------------------
Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

Edited: 18 October 2012 at 03:12 PM by Pelle Neroth

The EU is drafting a proposal to phase out the hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases that act as refrigerants in the world's refrigerators and car air conditioning systems.

Many HFCs are very potent greenhouse gases, up to 20,000 times better per molecule at trapping the earth's heat than carbon dioxide.
Ironically, HFCs, when they came on the market 20 years ago. were touted as saviours of the planet. In the 1980s scientists discovered the ozone hole over the Antarctic.

Further, this hole had been caused by the depletion of ozone, or O3, by chlorofluorocarbons, used in refrigerators, air conditioners and as aerosol propellants. The international community acted for once with a sense of great purpose and unity, and the Montreal Protocol of 1987 regulated the phaseout of the dangerous CFCs.

It has arguably been the most successful environmental treaty ever, and the earth's ozone layer is now reckoned to be recovering. The world community then looked for a replacement. In came the HFCs which did no harm to the ozone layer. But they were greenhouse gases all the same, just like the now banned CFCs, whose lingering presence in the atmosphere contributes 10% of the overall warming caused by greenhouse gases.

HFCs' contribution is smaller than that, because they have been on the market for a shorter time. But there is still a threat, says the Commission. Albeit a small threat, for now: according to a report by the University of Karlsruhe, HFCs currently contribute to the global warming equivalent of 1 per cent of the world's CO2 emissions. But emissions are growing from this small base, by up to 10% a year.

At the same time, the world aims to cut its regular CO2 emissions drastically. The EU has pledged a 90% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. In such a scenario, HFC emissions could make up a bigger proportion of greenhouse gas emissions by mid century since other greenhouse gas emissions would have dropped. One of the reasons for some HFCs' potency is their long half-life in the atmosphere of 140 years.

Car drivers in hot climates can relax, though, The EU is not banning air conditioning itself. There are substitutes. According to the Michael Kauffeld, a professor of refrigeration technology at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, there are substitutes for HFCs as refrigerants. Dimethyl ether, iso-butane. ammonia, water, CO2. Indeed, most new domestic refrigerators currently employ "low global warming" substitutes for HFC. But the figure varies widely from sector to sector. For industrial air conditioning systems sold today, the figure is only 25%. Kauffeld maintains that the complete phaseout of HFCs is possible in 20 technology sectors by 2020.
The Commission's aim - more modest than Kauffeld's - is to cut HFC use in most applications to about a fifth of today's output and ban it completely in some applications, such as the air conditioning units used in road vehicles and trains.

The draft proposal is expected to be published by the European Commission in early November. Scores of lobbyists from air conditioning manufacturers have signed up to the EU register of lobbyists in the last year. They will be arguing you have to look at safety, efficiency and cost considerations. Some of the substitutes are flammable. EPEE, the European association of refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat pump manufacturers, argues that "many local and national building codes are still severely restricting the use of flammable and even mildly flammable substances." Along with manufacturers' liability, this is one of the "main hurdles" against alternatives being implemented. However, prof Kauffeld argues you can design around these issues.

Another argument against new HFC rules may well be that, while cutting emissions is all very good, unless the rest of the world cuts its HFC output too, there will be no point in Europe going it alone. But in fact Connie Hedegaard, the Environment Commissioner, has pointed to the need for a global phasedown of HFC gases "as soon as possible" and hopes to work through the Montreal Protocol.

-------------------------
Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

I always thought the Danes were Europe's libertarians. Denmark was the country that allowed the most extreme animal pornography and which challenged the whole Muslim world with its Mohammed cartoons. Unlike their fellow Scandinavians, the Danes smoke and drink with abandon and don't care that their fellow citizens know it.

You can also see this in the health statistics. The Danes have among the shortest lifespans in western Europe. When I worked for a well known medical journal I interviewed the director of the Swedish centre for health studies who told me; "Danes have shorter lives than Swedes". But, he added,"they have more fun."

So what is this, a sudden conversion to nanny statism, most un-Danish? The Danish government has decided to go against EU law and ban all phthalates. For years, some phthalates, plastics-softening chemicals that go into PVC flooring and children's toys, have been accused of causing the decline in sperm counts observed among the men of the Western world. Earlier puberty among girls is another of phthalates' claimed effects.

The research is controversial. Two lobbies have lined up on either side. I stopped believing that the green groups were the automatic "good guys" long ago. They are often alarmist and extremist and, on this issue, they predictably have long called for a total phthalates ban. The chemicals industry has urged caution, and industry contrary to conspiracy theorists does not win all the battles. The commission's ban on all kinds of asbestos a few years ago is widely believed to have been too drastic. White asbestos, or Chrysotile, has far fewer health risks associated with it than brown asbestos, and indeed is legal in much of the world. Not in the EU. Maybe because white asbestos has the word "asbestos" in it.

In 2006, the EU set up the independent chemicals agency REACH to sort out these kinds of cost benefit analyses in as scientific a way as possible. Every chemical used in Europe has to pass through its purview. Registered and assessed and then given the green light or not before going on to the market. The REACH agency greenlighted the four phthalates in question, and one argument was that anyway there was a voluntary decline in its use by industry as the PVC industry increasingly has found substitutes under some kind of better- safe-than-sorry principle. When making risk assessments, REACH looks at the total picture. How much of the chemical is used and where before recommending a ban.

But now Denmark has gone ahead with a unilateral ban, which has caused a bit of a ruckus as this challeges the credibility of the relatively new chemicals agency. Perhaps it is because - in a recent survey I happened to see - Danish male sperm counts have declined more rapidly than in other countries in Europe. This is a headline winner, and perhaps it is easier to ban PVC flooring - which Denmark does not produce - than force a nation to change its drinking and smoking habits, which are also alleged to reduce sperm production. Meanwhile, the commission has talked of taking Denmark to the European Court of Justice to rescind the ban. The EU's authority is, after all, being challenged.

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Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

Did the European parliament save the free internet last week when it binned ACTA, the anti piracy agreement negotiated between the EU, the US and a couple of other countries?

There is an enormous amount of hype on the internet about the ACTA issue. ACTA stands for Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. I think the European Parliament probably made the right decision, although it kind of contradicts its support for the European Unified Patent court, which is another cross-border intellectual property enforcement mechanism. (I will be writing about it in my magazine column, which will be cross published here next week.)

Perhaps it is to ask too much of legislative bodies that they be consistent, or perhaps there is greater fear of the long arm of US law than the long arm of other member states' laws.

The principle is a laudable. Intellectual property is property. People who try to make a living by their ideas - like writers, journalists, programmers, musicians - have a right to be compensated for their work. There are websites in foreign jurisdictions that host large amounts of copyrighted materials. Ebook versions of best sellers, entire publishers' lists, indeed engineering manuals. Whole films, music albums, etc.

The treaty's stated aim was that sites in one country that intruded on copyrights held in another could be more easily shut down than at present. There is also a counterfeit goods provision in ACTA, but we won't complicate things for now.

Talks about ACTA began between the US and Japan in 2006 expanded to include another half dozen countries plus the US, and was signed by 27 EU leaders as well as Australia, the US and Japan last year. What it needed to go through for Europe's purposes was ratification by the European parliament.

The "adults" - the governments who signed ACTA - are surely right in principle on this one. If you talk to under-30s, 95% download movies without any qualms that the content creators won't be paid. And yet so many under 30s want to become musicians, journalists or film makers themselves. Go figure.

And yet the ACTA signatories are not quite consistent either. Is ACTA aimed at the big global websites? Maybe three-quarters of all the material on Youtube is copyright. Youtube is a $36bn American corporation based on hosted pirated material. Youtube is owned by Google, the mega corporation whose revenue comes from placing ads on other people's websites, including pages that hosted pirated material.

It may be tempting to wear the sceptic's hat and think the American negotiators were not exactly targeting their own corporations when drawing up this legislation, which was fast tracked outside regular forums for Intellectual Property talks, which have been bogged down for ages.

Which raises the suspicion the real purpose of ACTA was to target the small guy - like the British student who published links to movie download websites. There needs to be much better quality of discussion of what the internet really is about before justice is served by this legislation.

Anyhow, the just-for-free generation mobilised in their thousands in dozens of European and American cities earlier this year to protest against ACTA. The debate has been quieter in Britain, perhaps because the UK is one of the world's biggest producers of intellectual property. The Germans and the East Europeans, keen downloaders of movies and music, also have an allergy to online censorship and increased monitoring due to their Nazi and Communist pasts. The European Parliament was the recipient of an unprecedented lobbying campaign from various digital rights campaigning groups.

Conspiracy theorists could point to the negotiations over ACTA being carried out in secret among a small number of negotiators. (Except that is how most negotiations are carried out, at least initially, to prevent people from being tied to extreme positions.) While digital rights groups such as EDRI point to some proportionality issues. According to EDRI, the legislation was so vaguely worded that someone hosting copyrighted photos on their homepage blog might be able to be prosecuted if it had enough viewers so it could be counted as commercial. (Again: the commercial being vague. A lawyer's paradise.)

While the legislation was written in a way to reassure those who worried that their Ipods with pirated songs might be confiscated at the airport, so that would not happen, there seemed to be a provision for opening people's mail to see whether they contained USB sticks with pirated music.

And then there was the question of damages, where people downloading pirated stuff could be held to the full commercial values of their rips. With a one terabyte disk we are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And would US Congress ratify ACTA? US Congress for several years failed to ratify the 2003 US UK extradition treaty, raising fears it could do the same here to make ACTA a one way piece of legislation, applying to Europeans but not Americans.

If nothing else, the debate around ACTA reveals a profound distrust of the United States. To a growing number of Europeans, Obama, with his targeting killings by drone and covert operatives, has proved in many ways even less multilateral than president Bush ever was. Others have argued all these anti ACTA arguments are hysterical and overwrought.

In fierce debates and workshops these arguments have been aired in the European Parliament and succeeded in getting five committees to reject ACTA and finally the plenary session to reject it as well last week.

The European Commission says it will wait for a European Court of Justice judgment to see what do next as the Commissioner for Trade Karel de Gucht still wants some kind of ACTA on the books. This may be optimistic. The wind has gone out of ACTA and Germany's justice minister has said the agreement is weakly written, so the chances are it will rest here. But the discussion about piracy, copyright, intellectual property lives on.

-------------------------
Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

Last week the ACTA agreement was signed by 22 European countries in Tokyo. ACTA has been called Europe's equivalent of SOPA - the anti online piracy legislative proposal that collapsed in the US recently - but opinions really diverge whether it actually means anything.

Some activists and legal experts claim even this latest iteration of the agreement will change the internet as we know it. Others say that, while its original draft was harmful, much the sting has been taken out. The negotiations have not been conducted very transparently, and there hasn't been much informed debate about it.

The member states (minus Germany, The Netherlands and three east European countries) may have signed ACTA, but it still has to be ratified by the European parliament and the national parliaments. The EP was caught by surprise by the member states signing, according to an MEP monitoring the issue closely.

They have to contend with public opinion. There were demonstrations in Poland, and Polish MPs in Warsaw all donned their Guy Fawkes masks in protest, while several European government websites found themselves under attack by the hackers' group Anonymous in the past few days. There will be a vote in the plenary in June; if it fails at the European parliament, it fails in Europe - whatever member states have already signed.

The final draft that member states signed lacked the controversial three-strikes-of-illegal-downloading-and-then you'll-be-cut off clause; it also lacked the provision that ISPs will be responsible for the activities of their customers. But 40 so law professors and IP experts recently published a report containing a worried analysis of the remaining flaws in the agreement. Basically, they say, ACTA - already signed by the US, Japan and Australia - tried to impose America's harsh copyright laws on the rest of the world without the mitigating aspects like fair use laws.

It could become illegal to tamper will digital rights management restrictions. It could be possible for rights holders- the music and publishing industries - to make ISPs monitor copy right infringers or just suspected copyright infringers just on the industry's say so; police and judicial authorities will also be able to make monitoring requests just on suspicion. It will combine with a provision that criminalises not just blatant commercial use but also pirating for the purpose of "economic advantage". Some believe people who copy an e-book from their PC to their I-Pad will be caught up in the provision, since this saves money over buying a second book and so could count as "economic advantage".

The ACTA agreement is flexible enough and so hedged in with optional implementations that the "don't worry" brigade, which includes the European commission, says nothing will really change for their average surfer Unless domestic legislators tighten up domestic copyrights ACTA can be seen as a framework for what is permissible rather than a strict set of impositions. Some analysts believe that the real target is developing countries who will encouraged - rather forcefully - level up their copyright standards to EU and US standards if they wish to trade with the rich world.

ACTA started as an anti counterfeiting directive - think Rolexes and handbags - and that is where its political heart probably still remains. Intellectual property is Europe's crown jewel against China and India. On current evidence, the European parliament is extremely against it - the open internet lobby has always been surprisingly successful in its corridors.

If ACTA does end up in the rubbish bin of dead legislation, maybe it's worth looking at whether there are any aspects of ACTA worth saving to be implemented in a fresh, new proposal.

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Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

There might be a temptation to think that the EU legislative machine has taken a break while the big, dramatic issues concerning the euro hog the headlines. But no, it quietly churns on.

The 60W incandescent lightbulb ban on 1 September shows the very real and concrete powers the EU has to change everyday lives almost overnight.

And more is coming up.

The upcoming revision of the WEEE (Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive aims to reduce the amount of electronic gear that ends up in landfills. To date, the WEEE directive has been successful at getting big items returned for recycling at the retailer - fridges, washing machines, the like. But the directive has been less successful at getting small electrical items like hairdryers or MP3 players back. That may be about to change. To its critics, however, the recast directive, while laudable in its aims, is poorly conceived in its methods.

Under the existing rules, takeback occurs on a 1:1 basis, that is, only when the retailer sells the type of appliance taken back, and only when the customers buys a new item from the store.

But under the new proposal, which passed its second reading in the parliament, a member of the public could walk into a computer store with a hairdryer and legally drop it off for disposal, free of charge. Not just hair dryers but possibly game consoles, shavers, remote controlled cars, toasters. MP3 players, mobile phones.

Light bulbs included

In addition, used light bulbs could also be disposed of.

Effectively, it converts electrical goods shops into general collection points for all small electrical - and other - waste. Surveys show that most Brits are currently disposing of small electronic waste - unlike their white goods - in their general household waste stream with most householders saying they "don't give a second thought to it". E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in Europe, rising at triple the rate of the normal municipal waste stream and equivalent to more than 10 kilos a year per individual.

Carl Schlyter, MEP, deputy chairman of the European parliament's environment committee, told me that only the smallest electronics shops will be excluded. The aim, Schlyter says, "is to target not every retailer just the little bit bigger ones. This means that the typical tech wizard's shop would be excluded but not the supermarkets or the retail chains".

Schlyter says: "I do not feel sorry for the retailers. They are selling products which in many cases contain highly toxic chemicals, the least we could do is make sure this electronic does not contaminate municipal waste so that the municipal waste cannot be recycled. if we are successful, this recycling can be very economically positive with recovery of metals and reduction of environmental damage."

Eurocommerce, the association that represents the European retail sector, takes another view, saying there are problems the directive does not address. It would be costly to train the staff to dispose of stuff they do not sell.

Also some EU members, mainly in northern Europe, have voluntary takeback collection schemes that are currently high successful, and these would be duplicated by the new scheme.

Eurocommerce wants EU wide overall targets, but let member states decide the collection methods. "One size does not fit all in this case," the association's secretary general Christian Verschuuren says. "A single solution for all is always attractive. But, in the real world, it is not always the best solution."

Proponents say making it easier to dispose of small electrical goods would help the EU the meet new, higher 85% collection targets also being proposed in the legislation, which is expect to undergo final negotiations at the Council in January.

The new legislation comes amid growing concerns among European policymakers about the threat of global resource depletion of precious metals. Recycling modern electronic goods which contain these metals is seen as increasingly necessary.

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Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent

Here we go again. The Royal Academy of Engineering has lobbied for less bureaucratic EU science.

Framework Programme 8, or FP8, kicks off in 2014, and we are only little more than halfway through FP7, the current science spending programme, but already people are looking ahead to design the new one and saying, please, can this one be less bureaucratic.

We are talking quite large sums of money: the UK gets 500 million euros a year from FP7, a slightly greater proportion, 14%, than its share of the population of the European Union. Nevertheless, the UK tends to be involved in niche sectors, like space or SMEs, but is almost completely absent from some large well funded sectors like automotive and ICT.

Why is this? Judging by the excellence of UK science, it should be getting more than just over its population share. How can the UK maximise its income? A recent Academy report on FP8, after consulting views of British engineers, scientists and businessmen, found that that the application process was too cumbersome. They are calling for a two stage process, where a short two page application is sent off first, with only those with a realistic chance of succeeding invited back to submit a longer proposal. The commission should reply more quickly.

Stakeholders interviewed by the RAE also complained about the fact that a detailed schedule for the project was called for at the beginning, when the proposal was made. Business felt it was impossible to forecast workloads and staffing levels over such long timespans. It wants more flexibility, and would prefer rewards based on achieving a few simple targets, and less auditing and control, more trust. The message to the commission: Leave us alone and judge us by results.

Participants wanted better information on what FP8 is about - European science ambassadors, in the form of representatives from business and the universities that have successfully applied for funding in the past. More national contact points. And also called for was less bit-funding of projects,, more grand themes, grand efforts in areas where Europe had a realistic chance of making a difference in the next two decades.

It is depressing to read that bureaucracy is still a problem in FP7. If you go back 30 years and look through the science magazines, at reporting of the early FPs, like FP1, or FP4, the complaints about the bureaucracy have been pretty much constant. The money is on the prediction it won't be put right next time either. But what is this about grand themes? The other bugbear of Europe science funding projects has been that it's too focused on big industrial projects, and that it completely missed the biotech, nanotechnology and genomics revolutions. One caustic remark a few years ago in the world's top journal Science went like this:

"Academic scientists must apply to the commission to recover support that was assigned from national budgets. But a funny thing happened on the way to Brussels.

" Money taken away from national budgets reappeared earmarked for the 'train of the future', the 'car of the future', the 'toilet seat of the future'. Not surprisingly, enterprise groups that produced trains, cars and toilet seats got the lion's share of these funds - the net effect was that money cut out from national research programmes reemerged as industrial subsidy."

From the science perspective, the EU became much more big business-focused after the arrival of the Francophone Belgian commissioner for science Etienne Davignon back in the early 1980s. There was talk of a "European technological space", with large subsidy programmes that excluded competitors.

The system produced HDTV, Europe's grand attempt to seize the lead in broadcast technology. It was far more than a product; it was also a broadcasting system and a distribution network. Jacques Delors, the then president of the commission, hated by the British, likened HDTV to something that transcended economics. It was a grand project, not only in the name of economics but a cultural defence against American influence.

Philips and Thorn EMI led the project and the commission wrote directives that would force competitors to use the two European companies' proprietary technology. EU TV 95 was called the biggest public works project in Europe since the Channel Tunnel - the only problem being that the-so called D2 Mac analogue HDTV standard was made obsolete before it came to market by digital standards developed in America.

The commission was heavily criticised. The Financial Times wrote that the technology was dictated mostly by the defensive self interests of European manufacturers. And that the commission had completely failed to communicate with viewers, broadcasters and consumer organisations. "The result was a little like the ill-fated Delorean car."

The next science commissioner, Philippe Busquin, refocused EU science spending on science rather than industry: on researcher mobility, rather than big industrial projects that could go desperately wrong. His successor launched the much praised European Research council grants, aimed at funding the brightest blue sky pure science proposals from around Europe. So surely the British stakeholders don't expect the EU to return to the error prone approach of big ticket applied research, putting all one's eggs in one basket?

Not inconsiderable sums of money are at stake in European science. There probably needs to be much more discussion about how the money is spent. Debate on European issues in the UK is not very developed, and EU science funding is even more arcane than that.

Even specialist magazines like Nature only deal with it sporadically. If the next FP after all these years is still set to be too bureaucratic and awareness of past mistakes is still not sufficiently aired, let's do something about it.

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Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent