A last-minute deal by governments to re-write the torturously agreed rules on a single EU patent breaks community law, according to lawyers working for the European Parliament.
In a legal opinion on the proposal, Parliament's legal service said that while member states were legally entitled to propose amendments to the bill, the articles they took out - numbers 6 to 8 - remove an "essential element".
Moreover, it would breach the provision in the EU treaties to adopt "measures fo...
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Benjamin Fox is a seasoned reporter and editor, previously working for fellow Brussels publication Euractiv. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He heads up the AU-EU section at EUobserver, based in Nairobi, Kenya.