The position of the PP-CZ towards the PP-EU

This article summarizes the position of the Czech Pirate Party ¹⁾ towards the drafting of the Statutes, the foundation and inner principles of the European Pirate Party. We would like to discuss undermentioned topics and see whether we can find a common ground.

We believe formal structure is not necessary before the European Parliament elections in 2014 and we will not join any formal organization before the aforementioned elections. We are, nevertheless, very much willing to meet with other european Pirates, to discuss things, to cooperate and to dispatch one or two of our people for a common campaign team.

The PP-CZ believe the PP-EU should serve for coordination of the common campaign for the European Parliament elections in 2014 and for the founding of a European political party.

We are convinced it would be best to wait for more Pirate Parties to ratify the Prague declaration before any votes on the common program or Statutes of the PP-EU are taken. We understand this procedure can be lengthy and might seem useless or unimportant to many people or parties, but we don't see how any legitimate votes could be taken among a group of parties not all of which have shown the absolutely basic will to cooperate during the election campaign in 2014.

As we feel the Statutes drafting process is the most sensitive part of the creation of the PP-EU and because we don't think it is necessary to rush into founding the organization formally, we suggest the drafts of the Statutes' parts would be voted upon on a one vote per party basis (that is why we initiated the launch of a new mailing list for PP-EU that would include only one or two representatives per party) and that a part of the Statutes would be accepted only if a consensus is reached (a unanimous agreement with each part of the Statutes would be even better). We are strongly against voting on Statutes drafts on a one vote per conference attendee basis and, therefore, suggest all of the votes would be taken publicly on the Internet. The current PP-EU dokuwiki used for Statutes drafts is a good start and if it were used together with Liquid Feedback or any other functional voting system we would consider it perfect.

The preparation of the Pirate Parties International Statutes was rushy and you can see what problems it brought about. We do not want the PP-EU Statutes to end up the same way. We implore you to consider how important a document the Statutes are and to consider whether you, the delegates of your respective Pirate Parties, have the necessary expertise to make informed decisions on the concrete form of each of the parts of the PP-EU Statutes.

There are topics we all can easily agree upon and topics that will be hard to agree upon. Considering this, we suggest the common party/election program which should be binding for all of the member/cooperating parties would be composed using a consensus based voting (if there's no party against a component, the component is used), but each party could freely add their own election program components if they were not in collision with the common election and party programs. We distinguish between party and election program only because they need not necessarily be the same for every elections. To sum up: we do not wish the PP-EU to dictate its members what they should and should not enforce or advertise, but we would, of course, consider it best if all the members could reach a consesus upon the whole program and didn't have to add anything more on their own.

A few examples of components that would in our opinion reach a consensus:

• Reform of copy monopoly laws
• E-government (not electronic elections)
• Free Software in the state and local administration
• Protection of privacy
• Transparency in government, administration and political parties
• Abolishment of software and life–forms patents
• Universal referendum (upon a citizens' initiative)