Here's another, but I don't know how relevent it is or what the deadline is.

http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=SSHinFP7

deadline is 7.7.2006

i do think it is highly relveant to this list as one of the 7 points here is about "knowledge society". this covers a lot of topic that are relevant on this list...

Does anyone know how important these things are?

well. these are "consultations". that is the ec wants to hear what people think. they do not have to follow our way of thinking.. and they will not follow it does not follow in their neoliberal agenda.

the main reason that this consultations are there in the first place is to simulate a little bit democracy. hey we are listening to what the people think... of course they do not simply ignore what we write there. in the process of manging neoliberal hegemony it is good to know how people think, in order not co completly loose credibilty.

as the consultation about the community patent (already closed) puts it:

http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/indprop/docs/patent/consult_en.pdf

- due regard for *other public policy interests* such as competition (anti-trust), ethics, environment, healthcare, access to information, so as to be effective and credible within society.

so besides the profit interests of the corporations and their shareholders they need this information about "other interrests" to know how to be "credible within society".

one might argue that it is bad to help them in this process. but if enough pepople send statments there then at least they know that they "loose credibilty" if they do not at least pretend to have some regard fore those "other interests" beside the shareholder profits.....

greetings from vienna,

mond.