Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO Bundestagate -- Part 1: How the Bundestag Was (and Continues to be) Misled About EPO Affairs

Series index:

  1. You are here ☞ How the Bundestag Was (and Continues to be) Misled About EPO Affairs


Bundestag/Bundestagate
Investigating the suspected involvement of the EPO in attempts to subvert parliamentary democracy and the rule of law in Germany.



Summary: The EPO under management of Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos has conned the German government

This new series is a follow-up to the recent exposé concerning the sell-out of the EPO's "digital sovereignty" to Microsoft Inc.



This time we intend to investigate well-founded suspicions that former and current senior officials of the EPO were implicated in actions which resulted in a national parliament in one of the organisation's contracting states being misled about EPO matters, in particular serious deficiencies in the organisation's data protection framework.

The main focus of our attention is a series of events which took place in 2015.

The available documentary evidence suggests that the Legal Affairs Committee of the German Federal Parliament (known as the "Bundestag") had the wool pulled over its eyes by a senior official of the German Federal Ministry of Justice acting in collusion with a senior official of the EPO.

At first glance these events may seem like "ancient history". However, the reality is that little has changed at the EPO in the meantime, and it would appear that the Bundestag continues to be misinformed about EPO affairs.

"The available documentary evidence suggests that the Legal Affairs Committee of the German Federal Parliament (known as the "Bundestag") had the wool pulled over its eyes by a senior official of the German Federal Ministry of Justice acting in collusion with a senior official of the EPO."The story begins back in April 2014 when a member of the public requested the Bavarian State Data Protection Commissioner, Dr Thomas Petri, to investigate the EPO's data protection framework.

In May 2014, following the conclusion of his investigation, Dr Petri contacted his counterpart at federal level, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Ms Andrea Voßhoff.

Petri expressed his concern about the deficiencies which he had identified in the EPO's data protection framework and he requested Voßhoff's support in pursuing the matter at a national level via her office.

Ms Voßhoff's efforts to follow-up on the issues raised by Dr Petri ultimately led her to contact the Legal Affairs Committee of the Bundestag in July 2015, with a request to that Committee to take appropriate action.

The matter subsequently appeared as item no. 18 on the agenda of the 71st meeting of the Legal Affairs Committee which took place in October 2015.

However, the official government memorandum submitted to the Legal Affairs Committee was used to hoodwink the Committee into believing that everything was in order at the EPO and that the organisation's data protection framework was "fit for purpose".

So how exactly did it come about that the Legal Affairs Committee of the Bundestag was led to conclude that the concerns expressed by Dr Petri and Ms Voßhoff did not deserve to be investigated further?

"So how exactly did it come about that the Legal Affairs Committee of the Bundestag was led to conclude that the concerns expressed by Dr Petri and Ms Voßhoff did not deserve to be investigated further?"Official correspondence between the EPO and the German Federal Ministry for Justice can help to shed light on this mystery.

Of particular interest here are the exchanges which took place between the Vice-President in charge of the EPO's Directorate of Legal and International Affairs (DG5), Raimund Lutz, and the official of the Justice Ministry entrusted with preparing the official government report for submission to the Legal Affairs Committee.

The Justice Ministry official in question was a certain Dr Christoph Ernst, who at that time was an Assistant Director ("Ministerialdirigent") in the Ministry and also the head of the German delegation to the EPO's Administrative Council.

"From the available documentation it would appear that back in 2015 Lutz and Ernst acted in concert to misinform the Legal Affairs Committee of the Bundestag for the purpose of forestalling any further parliamentary scrutiny of the EPO's data protection framework."From the available documentation it would appear that back in 2015 Lutz and Ernst acted in concert to misinform the Legal Affairs Committee of the Bundestag for the purpose of forestalling any further parliamentary scrutiny of the EPO's data protection framework.

It is worth noting that when Lutz retired at the end of 2018, his successor at the EPO as the Vice-President of DG5 was none other than his former "accomplice" at the German Justice Ministry, Christoph Ernst. We will comment on this curious "coincidence" in more detail in due course.

But before delving into the details of this murky affair, we will first of all take a look at how the EPO has been the subject of parliamentary questions in various jurisdictions in recent years.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
 
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day