The Danish Parliament (by the EU Committee) has decided to change the mandate of the Danish government to ensure that on the next meeting in the EU Council the software patent directive will be discussed as a B-item instead of passing as an A-item without any discussion.

Other parliaments have passed resolutions opposing the software patent directive. But Denmark is the first country to call for a B-item and thereby reopening the discussion. If just The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Spain backs the Danish request, there will not be a qualified majority in favor of passing the directive without discussion.

“This is a victory for the democratic process in the European Union. Both in Denmark and the rest of Europe there have been a tremendous interest in this issue.- IT-Political Association is ecstatic now that there is a very good chance that the all the citizens in Europe will have a chance to participate in the discussion of the directive,” Ole Tange, board member in IT-Political Association says. “We do not view this as a failure for the proponents of the directive; if their arguments are valid they would still have been valid after a democratic discussion. Though so far we have not seen valid arguments.”

Niels Elgaard Larsen, Anne Østergaard, and Ole Tange from IT-pol.dk spoke to the EU Committee in Folketinget.dk as part of a delegation also counting Peter Ussing from PROSA.dk and Peter Mogensen from
Digitalforbruger.dk