As you may or may not be aware, there have been talks about facilitating the founding of a European Pirate Party. This blog has been created to introduce you to the topic, and to document the discussions that have been held on the topic in the run-up of the Pirate Parties International GA in Prague on April 14/15 2012. An extra panel will take place at the PPI GA to initiate further talks on PPEU.
The discussion started to take shape on the PPEU mailing list , and was then structured via Piratepad and a Wiki. This blog is now supposed to present the discussion so far in a way that is more accessible and easier to grasp than the Wiki. It will make it possible for those who will attend the PPEU panel at the PPI GA to prepare themselves and take an informed position regarding the various points that will have to be decided upon.
Before we get to the open questions, however, we will start by summing up what the intentions and motivation behind PPEU have been so far.
We are planning to release three more blog posts until Mid-April. The first one will discuss the question why we think a PPEU is needed. The second one will focus on the possible structure of PPEU, while the last one will deal with what we plan to discuss and do in Prague, and how you can prepare for the PPEU panel there.
We will do our best to incorporate not just our own views into the blog posts, but also to incorporate the opinions of others as far as they have been present in the discussions. However, if you think that we missed something, please let us know via the comments.
We will need your help on one more aspect: We will not be able to provide translations for all of our articles, nor will we be able to spread it in a way that every pirate will be able to read them, even though they are aimed at all European Pirates. Please help us translate the blog posts and please link them to your local Mailing lists, blogs, social media accounts, and so on. Thank you!
Kind regards, and na shledanou v Praze
Here is the link to the Pad with the Translations: https://eu.piratenpad.de/1st-Blogpost-TTF
Steffen Ortmann (@ortsman)
Martina P. (@LunaLoof / m.poeser@web.de)
Justus Römeth (@darthsquig / roemeth@yahoo.de)
Jerry Weyer (@jerryweyer / jerry.weyer@piratepartei.lu)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_political_party
Why re-invent the wheel? Let’s be pragmatic.
For those who don’t like clicking.
As of 1 November 2008, the regulation governing Europarties is Regulation (EC) No 2004/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 November 2003,[8] as later amended[9] under codecision (see above). According to that regulation’s European Commission factsheet,[10] for a party to become a Europarty it must meet the following criteria:
it must have legal personality in the Member State in which its seat is located.
it must observe the founding principles of the European Union, namely the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law.
it must have participated, or intend to participate, in elections to the European Parliament.
it must have in at least one quarter of the Member States, one or both of the following:
either it must have received at least 3% of the votes cast in each of those Member States at the most recent European Parliament elections.
or it must already be represented by Members, whether Members of the European Parliament for those states, or Members of the national Parliaments of those states, or Members of the regional Parliaments of those states, or Members of the regional Assemblies of those states.
it must publish its revenue and expenditure annually.
it must publish a statement of its assets and liabilities annually.
it must provide a list of its donors and their donations exceeding €500.
it must not accept anonymous donations.
it must not accept donations exceeding €12,000 per year and per donor.
it must not accept donations from the budgets of political groups of the European Parliament.
it must not accept more than 40% of a national political party’s annual budget.
it must not accept donations from any company over which the public authorities may exercise a dominant influence, either by virtue of their ownership of it, or by their financial participation therein.
it must get at least 15% of its budget from sources other than its European Union funding.
it must submit its application by the 30 September before the financial year that it wants funding for.
I like this very much “it must not accept donations from the budgets of political groups of the European Parliament”
Having a pirate MEPs might be good idea. If launching ppEU is the way to do it – then go for it!
cybernaut, read teh comments above…
IMHO this is totally unnecesary. Instead of creating new battlefronts, pirates should focus on handling the current ones. This sort of initiative should wait until there is at least 10 countries within the EU with pirate delegates in their parliaments.
I would like to see some pros and cons list, if possible. What are the benefits of PPEU? Is it about fundung? What would PPEU be in a position to perform that can’t be done right now?
Of course, I still have to go throug the wiki in detail, but all in all, this seems as a “pushing too hard” initiative.
Hello Ivan,
unfortunately it will take some time untill there are Pirate MEPs from 10 countries. In the meantime the Pirate MEPs we will have, will still need to organize their work and cooperation. PPEU could serve as a basis for that.
It is also about keeping the movement together and encouraging the European Pirate Parties to help one another.
Main con is that some people would have to invest their time.
Main pro is that we can gain influence on European politics.
It is also about funding. With money that PPEU can get (and other parties would loose) we can pay Pirates to work fulltime for our cause.
… but comments are not the perfect place to discuss such things. Are you on the mailinglist?
Now I am
Ivan, I disagree (Surprise).
We will explain our reasons why we think it is a good next step in the next blog post (will be published at the end of this week), the cons we know of are mainly that manpower will be put into this. But you can hardly force pirates to wok on other issues, or to stop working on this one. The consensus at least for PPSE and PPDE is that this makes sense, so it is much better to involve possibly every other European party as well. For those parties that don’t have time that means they are either happy with our work and join or they are not and don’t.
Working for the Swedish Pirate Party inside the European Parliament I see only benefits with having a European organization to lean on for support. It would greatly strengthen our position within the parliament to have such an entity up and running. And it would also be very useful to have such an entity well prepared before the elections of 2014 to handle the internal negotiations in the Parliament that are conducted after the elections but before the new MEPs takes office.
Pirates should try a sort of pan-European campaign in 2014, me-thinks. The core program is very similar in all countries, giving it pan-European facade would ensure broader impact and help the less succesfull, less visible Pirate Parties with (frankly) less politics-savvy pirates.
That is what we’re aming for. That is (also) what we think we need PPEU for.
[...] Hallå världen! On 28/03/2012, in General, by Justus Som ni kanske eller kanske inte vet har det varit tal om att hjälpa till att grunda ett Europeiskt Piratparti. Den här bloggen har skapats för att introducera er till ämnet, och för att dokumentera diskussionerna som hålls i ämnet under uppstarten av Pirate Parties International GA i Prag den 14-15 april 2012. En extra panel kommer att hållas under PPI GA för att initiera flera diskussioner om PPEU. Diskussionen började ta form på mailinglistan för PPEU, och den strukturerades sedan via paddan och en wiki. Den här bloggen är nu menad att presentera diskussionen som den har gått hittills på ett sätt som är mer lättillgängligt och lättare att förstå än wikin, och göra det möjligt för de som kommer att närvara vid PPEU-panelen på PPI GA att förbereda sig själva och ta informerad ställning vad gäller de olika punkter som kommer att beslutas om. Innan vi kommer till de öppna frågorna tänkte vi börja med att summera vad intentionen och motivationen bakom PPEU har varit hittills. Vi planerar att släppa tre blogginlägg till innan mitten av april. Det första kommer att diskutera frågan varför vi tycker att PPEU behövs. Det andra kommer att fokusera på den möjliga strukturen av PPEU, medan det sista kommer att hantera vad vi planerar att göra i Prag och hur ni kan förbereda er för PPEU-panelen där. Vi kommer att göra vårt bästa för att inkorporera inte bara våra egna synvinklar i blogginläggen, utan också att inkludera andras åsikter så som de presenterats i diskussionen. Men om ni tycker att vi missat någonting, var god och kontakta oss via kommentarerna. Det finns ytterligare en aspekt som vi behöver er hjälp med: vi kommer inte att kunna bidra med översättningar för alla våra artiklar, inte heller kommer vi att kunna sprida dem på ett sätt så att varje pirat kommer att kunna läsa dem. Snälla, hjälp oss att översätta blogginläggen och länka dem gärna på dina lokala mailinglistor, bloggar, sociala medier och så vidare. Tack! Med vänlig hälsning, och na shledanou v Praze. Steffen Ortmann (@ortsman) Martina P. (@LunaLoof / m.poeser@web.de) Justus Römeth (@darthsquig / roemeth@yahoo.de) Jerry Weyer (@jerryweyer / jerry.weyer@piratepartei.lu) This post is also available in: English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Catalan [...]