An appeal from three European NGOs – La Quadrature du Net, netzpolitik.org and EDRi-member Open Rights Group – reveal some disturbing MEPs amendments to the draft directives to reform the EU framework on electronic communications (telecom package).
The review of the telecom package was merely focusing on telecom-related issues (except for discussions on the ePrivacy directive, which is the subject of another EDRi-gram article in the current issue), but some of the 800 amendments on the 5 directives that form the current package might go further than just establishing the rules for a functioning electronic communications market and could endanger the principle of the neutrality of the Internet.
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« The politicians who engage in these summer manoeuvres dishonour Europe and their mandate. They rely on the fact that nobody watches them few days before Parliamentary holiday, to divert the Telecom package from its primary objectives of consumer protection. They pave the way for the monitoring and filtering of the Internet by private companies, exceptional courts and Orwellian technical measures. It is inconceivable for freedom but also for European economic development. We call on all MEPs to oppose what they have already rejected. » said Christophe Espern, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net).
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.13/telecom-package-internet