[pp.int.general] Fwd: 18 new MEPs to arrive next month

[mattias.bjarnemalm at piratpartiet.se]

When we look at transnational pirate cooperation at the European level we
have to different aims we might want to strive at. 

One is to fill the criteria of being a Europarty  wich require us to have
elected officials in one quarter of the member states at either EU,
national och regional level. (or ataining at least 3% of the votes in the
EU elections in one quarter of the member states).

If we achieve this there's basically nothing but benefits with becoming a
Europarty. So I don't think we'd need to much discussion wether this is
something we'd want or not.

The other, and perhaps somewhat trickier question, is wether or not we
want to form a group of our own in the EU parliament. The cons are that
small groups risk getting marginalized and that if we manage to create a
group of our own after one election but fail after the next it will be
interpreted as a sign of weaknes. But from my perspective the pros
outweight the cons by far:

We gain the right to hold seats in all committes , we'll be represented in
the Conference of Presidents and we get alot of funding for a secretariat
for the group. 

And the most inportant thing: noone will be able to deny that we've
managed to establish ourselves as an independent and important political
actor on the European level. 

But a question that we probably should adress before the elections in 2014
are what options we have if we gain considerably more seats than our
current two, but still fall short of forming our own group. I would argue
that in such a scenario we should stick together and try the following:

1) First we should try to find other parties that don't fit inte the
current set of political groups and see if we can combine to form a
political group. Only thing to consider here is that we should avoid
parties with opposing agendas to our own to avoid to much internal
bickering in the group, and we should also avoid all kinds of far
right/nationalist parties. Otherwise we'll quickly find ourselves
ostracized in the parliament. Current non-inscrits that could be of
interest in such a scenario would perhaps be the Austrian Hans-Peter
Martin's List and the spanish UPyD, and there might also be the potential
that parties that are currently part of another political group where they
hold little or no influence might want to leave that group to form a new
one with us. But sadly we won't know what potential allies, if any,
there'll be untill after next elections. 

2) The second thing we should aim for, should we fail to form our own
group, is to have an existing group that we join change their name to
reflect our distinctiveness within the group. This was achieved last
election by the Democratic party of Italy, who managed to change the name
of the socialist group to "Progressive Alliance of Socialists and
Democrats". To have a change of name in a group will acomplish two things.
First it distances us from the rest of the group and shows that the
alliance is one born out of pragmatism rather than out of a joint ideology,
secondly it displays political strength towards the rest of the world. This
will probably be easier achieved within a smaller group given the fact that
in a small group us bringing extra MEPs will have a proportinally stronger
impact than with a larger group.

3) The third thing we should aim for is to be granted the vice chair
within a group. this can either be in addition to a switch of names
suggested above or, if we fail that, bartered on its own.

In all these scenarios our position of strength and wether or not people
will perceive us as a coherent group is dependent on us sticking together
and negotioating as a collective.

There are most likely additional aims that we can strive at, and my
suggestions above should be seen as a starting point for a discussion
rather than an exact and unchangeable agenda.

Best regards

Mattias Bjärnemalm
Board Member PPSE

On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:01:25 +0000, Philip Hunt <cabalamat at googlemail.com>
wrote:

> I agree we probably won't get 25 MEPs in 2014 -- we're more likely to
> get 5-10 from Germany, keep our 2 from Sweden and maybe get one or 2
> elsewhere. But by 2019 we'll be bigger and better organised all across
> Europe (there aren't even Pirate Parties in all EU countries now --
> there will  be by 2019). Also, you can bet that the copyright industry
> will try to introduce something like SOPA/PROTECT-IP over here, and
> that will cause a lot of outrage, and attention for us. So by 2019
> it's likely that we'll be big enough to be our own group.
> 
> Will we want to do so? Perhaps we can best serve our interests by
> being part of a larger group (maybe an expended Green-Pirate-EFA
> group), if that larger group supports Pirate policies.