The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was negotiated in almost complete secrecy since 2007 by a group of states with a particular interest in protecting their industries' intellectual property rights.

The agreement would have entailed legal risks in the field of innovation, access to medicine, and others.

It lacked safeguards to put its implementation in context with legal obligations to protect fundamental rights.

The Greens argued since the beginning against ACTA. We were more coherent than any other group in the European Parliament.

The agreement would have created a great deal of legal unclarity with excessive negative effects. Its content would have harmed the production of generic medicine and various innovative processes, such as the neutrality of the internet and the neutral role of Internet Service Providers.

Its implementation would have entailed legal intrusions in the privatesphere of citizens.

The Greens succeeded, together with the support and pressure of European civil society groups to make the Parliament reject ACTA.

Our campaign "Act on ACTA" made a critical contribution to this movement.

You can read the story in our ACTA diary.