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The Pirate Party received 7.13% of the total Swedish votes in the 2009 European Parliament elections, which resulted in one seat in the European parliament.
By: Daniel Östlund, MEP, Pirate Party member, Sweden
I am a member of the Pirate Party and I am proud of it. I joined early this year and would consider myself a grass roots supporter. I have been following their development from day one. For a long time I have been unable to find a party that I feel represents my beliefs and me as a person.
On January 1, 2006, the founder of The Pirate Bay, Rickard Falkvinge, opened a website for people interested in forming a new political party. His goal was to receive as many names as possible in order to form a party that would focus on preserving the immaterial rights and privacies of the individual.
Within 48 hours the site had received 3 million hits. It quickly became clear that The Pirate Party was something many people had been waiting for. It was ready to ask the questions that people like me wanted to see on the agenda in the Swedish parliament as well as the EU. The Pirate Party is often portrayed as being a party of discontent or a ‘one question’ party. I disagree and I feel their campaign agenda and what they stand for is so much more than that.
I strongly feel they will be able to make a difference and will bring a more current and socially relevant view to politics in Europe. Laws such as the recently enacted IPRED-directive” (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive) which makes it possible for copyright holders to obtain a court order demanding the release of personal information related to users and organisations suspected of copyright infringements as well as IP addresses. The copyright holders will then be able to use the information to bring cases for compensation against the suspected individuals.
I feel this has significantly impacted the basic freedoms of the Swedish people. I strongly believe that had The Pirate Party been present when this law was first being debated there would have been a greater understanding of its impact on individuals and on industry itself.
The internet is an integral part of Swedish society today. The majority of the youth including myself have been instrumental in its growth and its place in our personal and professional lives. This is something I have always been extremely proud of. We are one Europe’s most connected nations.
Swedish politicians have clearly proved to me and many others with their recent actions that they are completely out of touch with today’s society. The Pirate Party has grown immensely recently. Every time issues regarding subjects such as file sharing, personal integrity or when our legal security has been compromised by private interests, The Pirate Party has stood up where others have not, and have been the voice we have needed. I feel this trend is set to continue and I am certain The Pirate Party’s support will continue to grow. The Pirate Party recieved 7.1% of the votes in the election, and will get 1 seat in the European Parliament. If the lissabon treaty goes through, it is possible that they will get a second seat.
In recent weeks in the run up to the elections other parties have begun to take notice of the support The Pirate Party is gaining with their agenda and have started adopting similar policies of their own. However, I feel they lack the understanding and the conviction that The Pirate Party has shown to me and many others in Sweden and across Europe.
I share the beliefs of The Pirate Party. Their goals to preserve our integrity and our security are fundamental issues to me and I feel it is extremely important that they are addressed now. When the Swedish government enacted the IPRED law they gave private interests the right to information that was previously reserved for the police and security services. This information is supposed to protect our rights and our privacy.
Private companies are being handed warrants to search and seize information on anyone they deem to be infringing upon their corporate agendas, such as suspected file sharers who have recently been very publicly targeted by the entertainment industry here in Sweden. File sharing has been an integral part of internet growth in Sweden and has been widely accepted by all as being part of everyday life. I feel the government has been influenced strongly by the private sector in such matters and have neglected the wishes of everyone else. Many people including myself are extremely dissatisfied and we feel we are being marginalised by the politicians and the private sector.
It is time we stood up and stopped allowing the private sector to dictate our politics. I believe The Pirate Party will do everything in the power to achieve this. That is why I joined them. They represent me and they understand my concerns.
Daniel Östlund
Pirate Party member
Pirate party – http://www.piratpartiet.se/
UK Election Day : 4 June 2009
The European Parliament is the only directly-elected body of the European Union. The Members of the European Parliament are there to represent you, the citizen. The European Parliament channel offers you insights into the parliament´s work and show you which of our activities and decisions affect your daily life.
You are invited to be informed and also create awareness for the upcoming elections as well as to interact with others from all European countries.
Visit http://www.youtube.com/user/EuropeanParliament
EU election and voting links released by JMECE Lab
JMECE Lab presents a selection of online sources aiming to share European Elections 2009 campaing onlne links and other useful EU websites. To access the publication, click here or download it from here http://www.box.net/shared/jbng3vkpk8
Official vs.unofficial partnership with the EU institutions
Source : EurActiv [edited]
Please see the EuroElections add here : http://www.europarltv.europa.eu/YourVoice.aspx?action=view&PackageId=3aa717a9-86c7-48b6-af0d-3046a364b605
Online broadcaster YouTube and TV channel Euronews launched a new broadcasting service to “connect voters and candidates” ahead of next month’s European elections. ‘Questions for Europe’ is not the first time YouTube has hosted political messages. The White House, Queen Elizabeth II and 10 Downing Street all have official channels on the site, while YouTube has worked in partnership with local broadcasters for elections in Spain, Poland, Israel and New Zealand.
The ‘Questions for Europe’ projectexternal seeks to encourage candidates, constituents and experts “to engage in a dialogue through online video”. The project, which becomes active for the public later this week, primarily relies on user-generated content, inviting citizens to submit questions to candidate MEPs by uploading videos to a dedicated channel on YouTube, a popular online video community owned by US giant Google.
Euronews will broadcast a selection of the questions – and MEPs, think-tank representatives and other Brussels commentators’ answers to them – at the end of its half-hourly news bulletins, which reach 256 million households in 144 countries.
Echoes of MyBarackObama.com
The European Parliament and the EU executive already have their own YouTube channels, but Questions for Europe’s backers stressed that the new initiative was completely independent from the EU institutions’ preparations for the elections. “There is no official partnership with the EU institutions,” said Echikson, and “there is no official partnership with the candidates or political parties either,” added Euronews managing director and board member Michael Peters.
Asked what the motivation behind the project was, Echikson said “we remembered the Obama ‘Yes we can’ phenomenon, and thought, ‘Can we do this in Europe?’” “It’s too early to say whether this will take off like ‘Yes we can’. It’s an experiment. It’s something new,” he added. “The glossiest veneer isn’t always the most authentic in politics,” added Aaron Ferstman, director of political communications at YouTube. “Raw can be better sometimes, which is where YouTube comes in.”
‘Not a marketing exercise’
Refuting suggestions that the whole enterprise was simply a marketing exercise for all concerned, Peters said the project was “about giving concrete, professional answers to individual questions”. “It’s a question of educating people. We are trying to be a bit of a Wikipedia on the EU elections,” Peters said. “It’s about putting intelligent user-generated content on air.” “It’s also about having the right questions available at the right time when we’re interviewing MEPs. It’s not a question of using our partnership with YouTube in a marketing way,” he insisted.
Some observers present at yesterday’s launch suggested that the channel could become a Eurosceptic hub, as most public contributions to such initiatives tended to be anti-EU. “We’re not afraid of it becoming a Eurosceptic channel. We know that it will be mainly Eurosceptic, and we’re waiting for that. We need all points of view for it to be credible,” insisted Euronews’ Peters. “Please Eurosceptics, come to us,” he urged.
Positions:
“The upcoming European election will captivate European citizens and generate discussions from Portugal to Poland. Our news, online content, and soon YouTube videos in Euronews broadcasts all fuel impassioned political conversations,” said Michael Peters, managing director and a member of the board at Euronews.
“The Euronews-YouTube channel enables a global audience to delve into politics in a way that simply was not possible during the last [European] Parliamentary election,” said YouTube’s director of political communications, Aaron Ferstman. “In conjunction with Euronews, a leader in both television broadcasting and editorial programming, we are for the first time enabling voters from around the European Union to ask their potential future member of parliament a question in video form and hear the answer,” Ferstman continued. “One of the things that works most successfully for politicians is to upload frequently and be engaged,” he said. “YouTube can raise awareness of the EU elections. Many people don’t even know when the elections are, but everyone recognises the YouTube logo.”
European Health Insurance Card
Protection Of Cultural Heritage
Human rights throughout the world
Does the EU understand its own past?
Source: Euro Parliament
Europe’s 20th century left a continent shattered by World Wars and Fascism and Communism. As Western Europe recovered after 1945 and went on to build a European Union based on democracy and open markets, countries behind the Iron curtain endured Communist rule. A recent public hearing looked at life under Communism and how little it is understood in west. Two decades on from the fall of the Berlin Wall and with West and East united, we want your opinion: “Does the EU understand its own past?”
Does the EU understand its own past?
If EU countries have emerged from sharply contrasting experiences, not yet sufficiently understood by each other, what of the EU as such? The EU has its own history, one emphasising democracy, unity and peace, but as the EU has enlarged to encompass 27 member states, does that history fully encompass the historical experience of all its citizens, including all those who lived much of the period since the founding of the EU under totalitarian, authoritarian and undemocratic regimes?
As part of this effort to create a better understanding of European history, the hearing – ‘European Conscience and the Crimes of totalitarian Communism: 20 Years After’ – on March 18 in Brussels brought together MEPs, European governments and NGOs. The discussion focused on how Europe should reconcile itself to its totalitarian legacy. It came ahead of a resolution MEPs adopted on 2 April to call for 23 August to be a Europe-wide day of remembrance for victims of totalitarianism.
West is West and East is East: different perceptions
Estonia was one of the countries swept back into the Soviet Union at the end of the war. Estonian Christian Democrat MEP Tunne Kelam chaired one of the panels at the hearing. He told us that it still surprises many Western Europeans that in the ten years following World War II “1 million people were killed in Central and Eastern Europe liberated by the Soviets”.
The consequences of this are that “today there are 10 of millions of citizens in Central and Eastern Europe who have or whose parents have suffered whose sense of justice have not yet been satisfied”.
Hungarian Christian Democrat MEP György Schöpflin told the hearing that “the West regards this issue as irrelevant as it gets in the way of everyday business” and that “Communist crimes are less important than Nazi ones”. He said such an approach “eats away at East-West relations”.
“90% never heard of Gulag”
Camilla Andersson from the Institute for Information on the Crimes of Communism in Sweden told the hearing about public perceptions on Communism and Nazism. In a recent survey of students aged 15-20 it found that 90% had never heard of the Gulag whilst the same number were well informed about the Holocaust. In addition 40% believed that Communism had contributed to increased prosperity in the world.
For the Presidency of the EU, the Czech Europe Minister Alexandra Vondra said that “knowing our past is also an essential tool to teach our children how to avoid intolerance, extremism and the recurrence of totalitarian rule in the future”.
Emmanuel Zingeris for the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania commented: “This is not an issue of left or right, this is an issue of the fate of our nations and that of millions of victims. We should not equal Nazism and Communism; gas chambers were not the same as gulags.”
In Romania the secret police – the Securitate – were particularly notorious. Marius Oprea from the Institute for the Investigation of the Communist Crimes in Romania told those gathered that: “More than 10,000 people were shot without any sentence by the Securitate, and out of the 1 million political prisoners more than 10% were killed during detention.”
Day of remembrance for victims
MEPs in a resolution adopted on 2 April called on European governments to establish 23 August as a Europe-wide Remembrance Day for the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. It would mark the date of the infamous Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 which enslaved millions. In a resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism they say “there can be no reconciliation without truth and remembrance”. They want the past to be documented and archives opened.
What has Europe ever done for us?
Source: European Movement
The European Dream
source: Wise Enterprise
Nicolas Sarkozy “Turkey is not European!”
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