The Commission are shilling for the big software companies who didn't get their way over decompilation during the negotiations about the software directive. Even the US Trade Rep. Carla Hills was breathing down people's necks to support the cause of SAGE (IBM etc) This is same USTR who assuming her position in 1989 notoriously declared: “I would like you to think off me as the US trade respresentative with a crowbar, where we are prying open markets, keeping them open so that our private sector can take advantage of them". The nice thing about patents of course is that liability is strict, no awkward exceptions or decompilation to worry about......

You might be interested in an article on the history of the struggle over decompilation by Thomas Vinje, The Legislative History of the EC Software Directive, in a book by Tapper called Software law in europe.

Furthermore, the Community Innovation Survey which is conducted by EUROSTAT (the statistics section of Commission, based in Luxembourg) has found that SMEs, whose interests the Commission rhetorically likles to claim to advance, scarcely benefit from the patent system and find it relatively unimportant for their innovation process. Speed to the market is considered much more crucial.

Lastly, William Kingston in TCD Business School hgas written quite insightfully against the patent system and has some nice articles which I'm sure he'd send you on the abuse of the patent system by large corporations and their hired lawyerly hands. Interestingly he is at least taken seriously in DG XII, who are one of the central players in the drive for software patents.