After the vote in the European Parliament (see our DeepLink for the full story), proposed directives like IPRED2 go to the Council of the EU.

The Council has a large and permanent bureacracy in Brussels, and governed by ministers of the national governments of the EU.

The Council is divided into several mini-councils, divided by topic, and attended by specific ministers from each state. For example, the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) council is attended by ministers who deal with the justice system in their own countries - the Home Secretary in Britain, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform in Ireland, die Bundesminister der Justiz in Germany, and so on. The Council of the EU has nine of these mini-councils - and they all meet at different times.

Given that IPRED2 represents a radical leap in the powers of the EU to control national law, you'd think it would now move to the senior ministers in change of the justice system. That would be the JHA, which next meets on June 12.

But we're hearing rumours that the directive is being redirected to the Competitiveness Council, which contains ministers for industry and research. This group meets on May 21, and has no expertise in criminal law: meaning that IPRED2 could be fast-tracked by politicians who may be unaware of its drastic effects on national legal systems' approach to intellectual property.

When the EU decides on where the directive is going next, we'll let you know: keep informed by subscribing to this site's RSS feed, or by bookmarking this page. If you haven't already, you can also sign our petition, and receive email action alerts of the next step in this battle to stop EU innovators, consumers and public servants turned into accidental copycriminals.