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Hello and welcome to the software freedom podcast.
This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe.
We are a charity that empowers users to take control of technology.
I'm Bonnie Mehring and I'm here with my colleague Alex.
Hi, Bonnie.
Nice to meet you.
Your sentence, Alex.
Oh, so yeah, so I'm I like doing the policy work for the FSFE foundation Europe and
yeah, you'll be already had several episodes on policy work and today we will share some
insights in the latest road, which happened in the youth in parliament.
So I'm really looking forward to this episode to follow up on the tech in your report from
the parliament, but also other upcoming votes that will be handled in the parliament in the
next weeks.
Thank you.
So as you already said, there's a lot going on, Alex, but as happening currently, there
are several votes coming up in the European institutions.
Can you provide us an overview?
Absolutely.
A few weeks ago, we already talked about tech sovereignty, own initiative report from the
European parliament, which happened in the industry committee, the each committee of the European
parliament.
This report was discussed and a vote happened yesterday in the committee.
We will discuss this in detail in a second, which then also means there is an upcoming plan
report on this for seen most likely this month's latest beginning of July because then the
parliament is going into the summer break and normally in particular in months of June, beginning
of July, are very important in the parliament since these are the weeks before a longer summer
break.
And that's normally a lot of reports are pushed to plenary to get a final vote on this to
have this done before the summer break.
And this is also too far to topics we are working on.
So we have this tech sovereignty report, which I just mentioned, but there will be also another
own initiative procedure from the European parliament on procurement.
And procurement is, yeah, absolutely important for us since we are running our public money, public
code campaign since a couple of years where we demand together with other organizations and even
administration to publish software under a free software license if it's paid this taxpayers
money.
And this principle is something we want to transfer into procurement rules.
European wide and as the European commission just recently also had a consultation on this
topic where we also participated and pointing to this issues.
The European parliament also want to before the commission comes up with this proposal, give some
comments.
And so to say red lines and demands to the commission, this is an initiative procedure report
they are doing.
And so this ought to be voted in June or beginning of July, so the committee vote is expected
to be in June.
And so that's I expect that there will also be a final decision on this report before the summer
break.
And I said both reports are own initiative reports.
So they do not really have like any legal effect.
It's not laws, but it's basically demands the parliament is put into words to commission and the
member states to get active in this field.
So this is happening this month and as it is happening in two very important topics for us.
One is technological sovereignty.
And as you said, our mission statement is to empower users to control technology.
This is absolutely contributing to our like core topics we are working on.
So to very important reports.
But also like what is going to follow up then afterwards, which we then also can pretty much discuss
in the end of the podcast what is happening with these reports and how is it going to continue
in the next pretty much like four years.
I'd say in the European Union with these two talks.
You already mentioned they are discussed in a committee.
I think last episode, we already talked a bit about committees, but can you walk us a
bit through this process here that's happening because there is now the vote on the order of
also vote on the tech in technological sovereignty.
Any and there will also be another vote in also a committee.
Can you tell us which one and can you tell us a bit more about those committees?
Absolutely.
So a parliament is organized normally.
And this is what you also see in television that there's a very big room.
And then you'll see people voting there.
And this normally is the plenary. So this is the room.
Also physically, where all members of the parliament come together and have like when they have the first
second concert reading of something where they go and vote.
And to prepare these votes and to do the groundwork so to say.
All parliament are normally organized in committees.
And these committees are focusing on specific topics.
So for example, the industry or consumer protection or health or environment and so on and so forth.
So these committees are there to prepare the final vote and the parliament.
And by thus to prepare a decision, which is then coming from the parliament.
And so this is basically the way how the parliament is trying to address demands or legal text or something like this.
So they call this a report.
So these committees then write a report, push this report to the plenary.
This report is then voted by the plenary and then ultimately we have text which needs to be discussed in a tri-log with the commission and the council to get law.
And this report is like this initiative procedure, which we just mentioned.
Then the parliament is just transferring these documents to the related institutions, normally the council and the commission to ask them to get active on something.
And these reports are also organized in a specific way.
So you have so called the rapporteurs and shuttle rapporteurs, which means you have from every group in the parliament one person being in charge of this report.
And the rapporteurs so to say the leading one who is there to come up with compromises and find majorities in the votes.
So you have a trap report, which is coming from the rapporteur.
The repertoire gives this trap report to the committee where the members of the committee will discuss this.
And based on this discussions, the rapporteur as well as the shuttle rapporteur come together find a compromise and ultimately vote on those.
And this vote then leads to so to say a trap report from the committee.
So this is the position of the committee, which they propose to the plenary to vote on.
So normally this then also means if you give it to a bigger group or larger group, then there might be people saying, are you forgot about this?
You forgot about this since you are the industry committee, but we have some other remarks on this or some other remarks on that.
So we have a table so called amendments to this and they also will be voted and based off this final vote, you then have a report which reflects the position of the opinion parliament.
So this is the procedure and this is also the role of the committees is tax or relative report we are talking about is handled in the industry committee eater, while the procurement any report is handled in the info committee, which is the internal market and consumer protection.
All right, thank you very much for the insights.
Yeah, there is a site check that is even a book about the procedures in the parliament and this is a couple of front pages long so and you should be familiar with these rules.
At least with the core rules and normally you also learn about a new rule, which it hasn't discovered yet with every new file since there is always something unique to it.
Oh, it's regulated.
Okay, well, reading 100 pages is quite a toss ahead.
I'm happy that we are discussing this and that we bring this information in a more transportable way or at least understandable way, I hope.
Yeah, hopefully.
Okay, so this technological serenity any we have already discussed in our previous episode and this was now voted on have they been major changes in the last weeks.
Yeah, have been major changes.
One could say that was one major change and this major change led to the situation that the whole text was changed.
And as already discussed in our previous episode, but also to recap a bit.
The repertoire for this report, so the one as I just described.
Being more or less in charge of finding a compromise for the parliament is a far right.
Member of the parliament and thus made it a bit tricky to come to compromises to put it in nice roles.
So the repertoire I said is normally the person who presents a draft based on the first discussion in the committee where the repertoire things are.
So this reflects some sort of like my opinion, but it's also a report which is basically seeking for a majority.
So you normally don't go there and say, this is not my private opinion and here you go eat this and all good.
So it should be open to find majorities for these reports, right.
So because as they are downloaded and then you sort of say politically lost.
So but the situation now is a set with the far right.
Member of the parliament is that she proposed the text, which was.
Yeah, that also.
I mean, it was not really a good draft, not only in terms of like that it was filled with.
Yeah, basically her opinions and not majority opinions, but also, yeah, it was like, yeah, not only politically, but also like how you write reports was.
And not looking like that you put a lot of efforts into this.
However, this led to the situation that she was also kind of like isolated.
And so she only basically locked up as the other fascist groups together.
And trying to improve the text while at the same time, the conservatives liberals, screens and social democrats came together.
And yeah, try to still have a saying on this textual entity and like to keep the topic as something which needs to be discussed.
Again, up this like one single compromise amendment, which they put to a vote and basically asking to replace the whole text with new tips.
So and this compromise amendment included, for example, the saying is on the Open Source first policy.
Also talked about other topics, which are not that important for us like undersea cables chips.
They also talked about automotive since the conservatives was in so that there are also some pretty wide ideas in the report.
However, except so the compromise amendment was done and was prepared by these four groups and was presented to vote.
And now we talk again about procedures as a repertoire, you have to chance to step down from your own report.
The reporters normally do this once they see that the report is going in a completely wrong direction from what they personally believe in.
So and that was also what people expected to happen in this vote since basically the report now with this vote happen.
It looked like a report where not a single word is coming from the repertoire.
So even contrary to this, the repertoire also came up with a compromise amendment.
It's so called compromise amendment, which was clear that it is nothing to do with the compromise other than the name, which found no majority.
So there were two amendments tabled.
And the beginning there were like 400 amendments.
So coming from individual members of the committee, right, which is a huge amount for such a new report.
So there you can always see that this was not contributing to the compromise, so to say and based out of these 400 amendments which have been tabled.
And coming from like conservatives, so the Democrats, Greens and Liberals, they said together and said, look, more or less, there are points where we agree on.
And there are other points where we might kind of compromise on, let's sit together and write a new report since it's absolutely impossible to collaborate with her and to find compromise as they have seen, not only by her work, but also since some groups just simply do not want to work together with specials.
That's why they came together based on the individual amendments table to come up as a compromise amendment and this compromise amendment.
Basically, they concluded all these, let's say 200 amendments into one amendment, but basically every sentence she was saying is we delete this sentence and replace it with this sentence.
So that ultimately you came up to the text that was completely new written.
Next to this text, which was put together by this group as a compromise amendment, there was another compromise amendment by fascist parties saying like this is our proposal for a compromise amendment.
So and that would also have like modified the text a lot, but still would have meant that since it was also coming somehow from her that this reflects her position also.
No, since there was another report basically adopted a set not a single word from the repertoire itself is in this report and for this it's absolutely crazy that she still stays on the report.
So we have a fashion repertoire on a report where there is not a single word of the repertoire in this report, but the name.
This report is now pushed with the name and the text of this group into the plenary for a final vote and this is yeah.
I find this very fascinating because like there's nothing of this report reflect her personal opinion or her the opinion of her party anymore.
So why is she still staying on there.
So I mean politically she completely lost so this is absolutely obvious, but maybe she wants to just clown the procedures and ultimately if the report is voted in the in the plenary.
There is the same for example go to the commission and tell them about the report and this is done by the repertoire so ultimately if she stays on the report and it gets majority, then she will be the person representing the parliament towards the commission and counsel telling them about this report.
And this will be a meeting so what she will get out of this is meeting time.
Yeah I see I see so she is gaining politically so to say.
And even so like if you look at her social media profiles then it's also that she is communicating that she's working on textual remedy and she's presenting her report and all this reports is coming with the nice logos of the parliament and everything looks official as it is somehow also official.
And she's just not talking about towards the public about that the report was download that she's just using her draft to promote herself.
And she can easily do this since she is still a repertoire for this so and she's one could say lying towards the public seems she's not pointing to the fact that like her draft was downloaded but since this is still on official paper of the parliament.
It looks to people like this is an official document which is now being in place.
If you don't know precisely about the procedures and how a document should look like if it's coming with the final vote.
You could easily be misleaded by her communications strategy and like following her communication style saying she's working on textual remedy this is her report so she's active on this.
She seems right to have a begging for this since it's coming out of the parliament.
Very interesting.
Yeah so if you don't dig into the details then and if you just like do not put some light on this and then it's easily possible that this person will be able to present herself as someone who finds this position in the opinion parliament on textual run.
And this is basically what she's doing so she's also on conference is giving talks on this presenting basically her trust report and not what was voted.
This is very crazy now but we will keep an eye on this so what happened how is the standing of press offer in this report.
Yeah so I mean first of all again we have to see that this report is basically what's now in the report was not produced so to say under normal circumstances or under normal procedures.
It was pretty much and this could also be criticized I think done behind closed doors to come up with this compromise amendment right so compromise amendments are normally also not public.
They need to be leaked and also it's very hard to see which group fight it for what I mean you can guess I mean if you look at the report I said it's about technological sovereignty so software is one part of it but it also talks about other parts.
Out of the sudden there is some car industry in it so I guess this is coming from the conservatives and maybe even from the liberal so there you can guess but it's really hard to see how text involved and from who it was originally drafted and how did the majorities formed around this during the process so and this is absolutely needed to challenge with debates right and to understand where are majorities and why are they there.
So this just as a background information that you should keep in mind that this is basically already a compromise and not something which was voted might so to say in a normal procedure however part of the compromise and this is absolutely good is that they see the benefits of how what they call Open Source first policy.
And so this is also something what we basically demand is our public money public court campaign as said so we want that taxpayers money is used to come up with the software and not the proprietary software and so this should be the default right so in the first place we procure free software and if this is not possible then you need to explain why this is not possible it needs to be controlled by the court of order this why this is not possible to prove free software.
So and this would be from our perspective so to say like what they call Open Source first policy right so and they see the benefits of this they see this is good for member states if they collaborate it's it's good for innovation it's good for competitiveness so they see all the values which we basically also point towards in our public money public court campaign and mentioned them so which is pretty good and we can see that the parliament understood the benefits.
Of this policy however what they failed is to demand something in this direction right so they just said it's good and that's it so they didn't say to the commission now come up with a law.
And the law should for example have an introduction of the court of auditors there should be statistics on this there should be transparency on this there should be clear guidelines in procurement how to get there and stuff like this so there's there's a
Normally you have in these own initiative reports clear demands so since the parliament can freely speak so to say since this text is not going to end up in law but just basically only demands then you want to come up with a lot of demands since you basically negotiate with the other institutions council and commission if you like and also there you need to compromise and if you start with the week text then it's easier for the other institutions to basically download you if you like.
So in this regard the text at the moment for us is missing some concrete measures so it's coming up with the I'd say some sort of like correct assessment but it's missing concrete actions and this is also what we demanded in our press release that the plenary so I said there will be a plenary road still so this means groups and a larger group of MEPs or even committees can still table amendments to what now the e3 came up with.
And here we are asking MEPs to to table these kind of amendments to also introduce some sort of measures and to be a bit more concrete and what they demand so to basically not only come up with an assessment which is absolutely good and it's also good that they mentioned the world Open Source first policy right so this also helps us in the debate is the commission so it's good that they use this wording however concrete steps are missing and this is now what we are fighting for.
So first of all I'm very happy that the word in Open Source or free software actually made it in into the report because I remember our discussion last time was that we actually feared that it might not be considered or that something clearly as this or clear statement like this will not make it into the report so this I think is something that we can.
I think it's something that we can be very happy about and I guess this is also down to some of our good work.
I think so too.
This is a short break for our own cause thank you for listening to the software freedom podcast working for software freedom and producing podcasts costs money.
So supporting us with a donation on the FSFE dot org/donate and the show notes.
But now we are like we are having the situation that this is going to be compromised properly because there will be another round of discussions.
There's a procedure that will follow up now on this any and we are missing the concrete measurements.
Is there a chance that others can still step in and change this text and add those or is this currently not going to happen.
No, I mean it's it's like from the ether to the plenary now it's transferred from the committee into the plenary and in the plenary it can be modified by a larger group of MEPs I think it's like something around 80 MEPs.
So if they come together and say this is our amendment to improve this in this so to come up for example is the sort of measurement.
Then they can table this amendment and this is also true for communities.
So another community could go there and say look we want to amend it this way or groups that's the pretty much the most normal way.
So that the group like I don't know quite some of the greens are coming and say look we now want to introduce some measures so therefore we came up with this amendment.
And these amendments then will be collected before the vote in the plenary and yeah will be organized by the secretary yet in a way that they can be voted and then basically at every member of parliament votes on these proposals.
And if they find a majority they are in the report and then you have a final vote on the report itself and if this both is like finding a majority.
Then you have a report with this amendment so they're still a chance for the parliament to improve this text and so this could be also achieved by contacting any piece asking them to approve this text.
Do you see that there is a realistic change that this might make it in or is there still this political situation going on.
As you already mentioned Sarah Knavo is still the rapporteur so will there still be a compromise between the other democratic parties or what's happening here.
Yeah so and that's that's one of the key questions right so one of the potential outcomes is that the report is improved with this amendments.
So to say they find majorities to introduce some new measures or whatever or even they just keep the report as it is.
And then they might still download it since the rapporteur is not willing to step down from report.
But it could be a potential outcome that we in the end have text wise and I report.
But which will not find a majority since the rapporteur do not want to be removed from the report.
Also it could happen that the rapporteur sees that it's a bit strange to put the name under such a report and response, then the report will find a majority.
It will be removed and then it's just the report basically by the parliament so if there is there is no authorship and then I'm not fully sure about the procedures but I think the chair of the committee will be then the one who is presenting the report basically towards the council and commission.
But you see there might be a situation that based on the procedures with we come up with a vote which is not looking too much at the text but more online who is on the text and what are the procedures so in this situation where we are and that's pretty hard to predict at the moment.
There are majorities we go so this is also what is going to be discussed between groups at the moment.
So for example, there's some sort of like exchange between on a working level between groups or how will you vote what's happening if we vote like this.
So they are trying to find majorities and raise how to result so and for this nobody has an answer yet.
And I guess we will pretty much only know the answer after the vote so it's definitely a pop conservation.
We are in and it's also very difficult to anticipate the outcomes also since this is the very first time that we have a far right.
We have a member on such a report in this new term between new majorities right so it's also showing a lot and maybe maybe even define a lot of the workflows and how they play the procedures.
And a lot will be visible after this kind of report on how do the fascists play the procedures, how we normally use the procedures and what yeah to what situations this can be and how to reveal this.
So next to and that's why also in this podcast we talk a lot about not free software related topics that they are all still very important for us since also as said, the repertoire is presenting these ideas towards the public so they work on these topics so it's not just that they sit there and do this.
No, no, they also go towards a public and trying to frame it that way they see it so and this is also something which we have to understand they work on this topic is a reality is something so the serenity have it even in their name right.
So it's a debate they are pretty much interested in and they have a pretty national views in this debate so and this is something we should be aware of.
And maybe also need to make sure that the pine majorities that are possible without fascists and this is also something what we have seen so it's on the other hand, good to see that the conservatives did not went to the far right and trying to compromise with them but went to the social democrats, greens, liberals trying to finally compromise with them.
Yeah, absolutely I can I find this very very positive to be honest because it shows that some of the democratic parties come together and they work together on this and I find this very empowering.
Absolutely, absolutely, but it's also a set there are some points to it where we also need to say look it's good that you are working together, but if you then undermine democratic procedures and this is also the so one has to be very careful with this procedure game, this is what I want to say and also it's not over yet.
So it might fail in the plenary vote and what do we do then so and this is what I mean it's kind of like a pop consideration and really hard to say what's the outcome in the next week a lot can move so like politics is it can be very fluid and I just believe this group will be successful if they are successful right so it still can happen that one of these.
Like amendments that I just mentioned is going to be table to improve the text where maybe the conservatives vote together with the far right so this is something where we what we don't know yet and this is something also we have to wait for to see what are the amendments they are coming up so and where are ultimately majorities around these amendments this is still all to come.
And this is something we definitely work on where we have an eye on that's also by a guest we will have.
First let me ask you first when is the plenary vote scheduled or is there already a time for you to get you but the set I mean the summer break is just about to come and the last plenary session is beginning of July and it's very likely that it will happen in this.
Months plenary vote all latest in July in the plenary session so before the summer it's very likely that we will have results on.
Thank you Alex thank you so much for the insights but in light of the time and as I want to keep it short.
I would say we pull up on this and we see what's happening and I'm very curious to see this political game play out.
Absolutely so I said I'm also super interested and happy to continue this conversation with you and the podcast maybe if our dear listeners have any feedback from us I think that would be also very welcome so in terms of like how understandable is this how interesting is this for you.
And also are you looking forward to the next session on this report since this will be then the third edition where we are only discussing this so.
I guess for us it's interesting but yeah I'm also very interested in the feedback of all listeners for this so if you have any please feel free to share.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
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