Competitiveness Council fails to agree on Community Patent

In spite of a major effort by the Irish Presidency and urgent calls from industry representatives, EU industry ministers have again failed to come to an agreement on the establishment of a legally enforceable community patent (see

. Just as in the stalled talks in November, the main sticking point concerns the question of the translation of patent claims. Ministers could not agree on time delays for translation and the legal validity of patents in case of translation errors.

A compromise solution tabled by the Irish presidency, which would have left it to national courts to deal with the discrepancies between the text of the patent in its original language and the translations in the infringers' language, failed to gather the necessary support.

However, as their contribution to the Spring European Summit at the end of the month, ministers have approved the 'Key Issues and Priorities Paper', in which they committed themselves to undertaking a series of actions aimed at enhancing competitiveness, developing an integrated approach, moving forward on regulatory reform and ensuring the right framework conditions exist for enterprise, entrepreneurship and industry. The paper underlines the vital importance of R&D investment and of innovation.

The Council also adopted conclusions on the Commission's recent communications on entrepreneurship and on basic research in Europe.

Other issues discussed at the Competitiveness Council meeting concerned the new chemicals regulation REACH, a directive on services in the internal market, a regulation on consumer protection, a regulation on shipbuilding, European space policy, basic research and intellectual property rights