First, I must say I was totally flabbergasted by today’s statement by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, concerning the change of heart the Government had in the topic of ACTA. And I am not the only one. Nothing suggested that during the last weeks.

However, the more surprising, the more welcome it is.

From what I gather what has been said, and maybe more importantly HOW it has been said, is a clear indication that Poland will not, in fact, ratify ACTA and is clearly opposed to it on the EU-level. This is extremely important and a clear success in anti-ACTA fight.

The PM could send ACTA to ratification in Poland now in order to throw it out quickly here; but he already said a week ago they are “halting” the ratification process in Poland, so he’s in a tight spot with that and in some sense he cannot do that at this time, politically. I can understand and respect that, providing that other concrete actions (sending ACTA to CJEU?) will follow during the next few days.

No info on the retraction of the Polish signature. This is interesting, but I cannot comment on that, I am not a lawyer. Maybe the Government decided it’s more important to focus on Europarliament rejection of the treaty? This could make sense.

All in all, we (the NGOs) are very pleasantly surprised with that move and we are definitely supportive of it. However, that’s just a start of two long processes:

• throwing ACTA out in EU;
• global debate on (much needed) intellectual property rights reform.

Both of those themes were present in what Tusk said and it is a very positive and welcome sign of goodwill, and possibly a good start to rebuilding trust, lost on this fateful day of January the 19th.