Chair,

On behalf of the European Union and its Member States, we would like to thank you and your Vice-Chairs for moderating the rich and constructive discussions we had during this 14th Session of the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement. We would like to thank again the WIPO Secretariat for the preparation of the working documents and all its work during the session. Our thanks go also to the interpreters for their excellent assistance throughout the meeting.

We were interested to learn about all the projects and initiatives presented during this session, and would like to congratulate the speakers and delegates on their contributions. As we stated in our opening statement, the European Union and its Member States believe that the valuable work of this Committee is crucial to enable exchange of best practices between the WIPO Member States, learning from each other’s experience.

We welcome the intention to continue the work in this Committee under the well-balanced work programme, in the positive and collaborative spirit. We look forward to continuing discussions on education and awareness raising initiatives at the next session, not only to sensitize the society on the negative consequences of infringements of IPR, but also to demonstrate how to promote easy access to legal content and genuine products.

We believe that measures that support small and medium enterprises in their efforts to combat counterfeiting and piracy should remain in the focus of this Committee’s work. We found the discussions on the use of new technologies and role of intermediaries in IP enforcement highly interesting, and would appreciate continuing it in the future.

The European Union and its Member States will continue to support the work of this Committee and look forward to further fruitful cooperation.

Thank you.