On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 2:10 PM, Ole Husgaard <<a href="mailto:pirat@sparre.dk">pirat@sparre.dk</a>> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Nobody ever talked about joining other parties. We talk about joining a<br>
parlamentary group, if we do not get enough seats to form our own group.<br>
Groups in the EU-Parliament are not political parties.<br>
<br>
And the declaration do not talk about endorsing the politics of other<br>
members in the group. We will of course try to make the rest of the<br>
group vote like we do on the issues that are important. In exchange it<br>
makes sense that we return the favor by voting like they want on other<br>
issues if we do not disagree.</blockquote><div><br>Groups are not political parties, but are compound of political parties. Every issue is important, it's just that some issues are our core issues and some are not part of those core issues. <br>
<br>There is no favour to return to a party if that party accepts to vote on the same direction as us on our core issues: if they do so it must be because they think it's the right thing to do for the welfare of all our fellow citizens.<br>
<br>If we are going to vote (instead of remaining neutral) on an issue which is not part of our core issues, it must be because we think it's the right thing to do for the welfare of all our fellow citizens. And as principle we remain neutral, the only democratic way to know for sure that such a vote is the right thing to do for the welfare of all our fellow citizens is by asking all our fellow citizens what they want us to vote, regardless of the party they voted and of course regardless they are members of a Pirate Party or not. Doing so, we achieve to vote on non-core issues the way most of the people wants us to, and therefore we achieve not destroying the unity and neutrality of the Pirate Parties.<br>
<br>I don't feel the need of answering the rest of your message because what you wrote after that is based on the precept I have just discussed.<br><br>And I repeat this is a must for PIRATA. Therefore we just can't and won't join a PPI platform if this subject is left undefined.<br>
</div><br>Best regards,<br><br>Felix Robles, a member of PIRATA<br></div><br>