Today, the EU Council of Ministers will be considering the “software patents in Europe” bill. (The Parliament has already amended the initial pro-patent draft to say that software patents shouldn’t be allowed, but the Council has the power to reject those changes.)

The particular issue aside, all this is happening under a thing called the “co-decision procedure”, which is how the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament decide on proposals presented by the European Commission.

Here is the procedure, written in pseudo-Java. It runs to eight pages, and is very funny. Well, I find it funny. Perhaps that’s not the same thing.

Sample code:

try
{
jointText = cc.discuss();
while (!((cc.getCouncilRepresentatives().qualifiedMajority(jointText))
&&(cc.getEPRepresentatives().majorityOfMembers(jointText))))
{
jointText = cc.discuss();
}
}
catch (Timeout e)
{
jointText.setState(REJECTED);
return null;
};