European Parliament
Seán Kelly  (PPE ).
(GA)
Mr President, like Julie Girling and Charles Tannock, I voted first for this report to be cancelled and, when that was not accepted, I abstained at the final vote because I feel it is right and proper to wait until the Court of Justice of the European Union comes to a decision before we come to a decision here.
Having said that, one thing I could not understand about this agreement is that it is supposed to be dealing with counterfeit goods, and as 95% of these goods are coming from China, and to a lesser extent India, and those countries are not a party to this agreement, I just wonder how effective it would have been anyway.
When I asked this question I was told this was a ‘coalition of the willing’. I would say more a ‘coalition of the innocent’, and the guilty are let off scot-free.
So now that we have a chance to go back to the drawing board we should first deal with China, and to a lesser extent India, in the area of counterfeit goods, which are costing us EUR 250 billion and hundreds of thousands of jobs, and then move on to other matters.

