An EU Regulation immediately becomes law in
all member states, and the Parliament has just amended a Regulation
known as 'Rome II' that decides what happens when the laws of two
countries contradict each other and no contract is in place to
decide the outcome.
The Council of Ministers had opposed a
previous extension of the Regulation to include privacy and
defamation, but the Parliament has voted to re-include it. The
deadlock is likely to proceed to the formal conciliation procedure,
where MEPs and Ministers in equal numbers will attempt to find a
compromise.
The Rome II Regulation is designed to govern
cross-border disputes where there is no contract, and covers a
large number of areas. Privacy and defamation have been the most
controversial, though.
The Parliament's amendment suggests that in
the case of print or broadcast media the law which should apply in
disputes is the law of the country to which the publication or
broadcast is most directed. If that is not an easy fact to
determine, the relevant law will be the one of the country where
editorial control is exercised.
Member States do not want the complex formula
to be introduced. Media organisations are likely to back the plans
because the other option is for the applicable law to be that of
the country in which the defamed person lives. They argue that that
would mean that media companies would have to know the privacy and
defamation laws of every European country.
The Parliament's passing of the amendment
could throw the process into turmoil. Vice-President of the
European Commission and Commissioner for Justice Franco Frattini
spoke before the vote was taken and said that "there is no way they
[the amendments] will get through" the Council of Ministers.
"I am delighted that the European Parliament
has decided again with such an overwhelming majority to underline
it's for the original support first reading position," said Wallis.
"We may not have reached the end of the story of Rome II; by again
passing these amendments there will almost certainly have to be a
conciliation process to iron out the final difficulties between the
European law-making institutions."
"Rome II will allow us to know where we are
within the legal diversity that is modern Europe, we at least need
an agreed set of coherent rules; a set of rules that we can all
apply to determine whose national law is to be used to sort out any
given set of facts thrown up in front of our courts as a result of
the increasingly mobile and cross border lives which our citizens
live," she said.
