Kenneth, you misunderstood me. While I am no expert on it, I am quite aware of the situation in Spain re languages, ethnicities, and regional political parties. Germany is a great deal more federal than Italy, France or the UK, but nowhere near to Spain (although we do have our own minorities with other languages, such as Frisian, Danish and Sorbian, and the Danish and Frisian have their own party). Also, what is considered a dialect in German is often very far away from standard German, usually further than the different languages in ex-Yugoslavia, and similair to Spain (except Catalonian and Basque obviously). With the exception of Scots I doubt that English speakers have something similair to the differences between Swiss German, Bavarian German, Low German in correlation to High German.<div>
<br></div><div>Anyways, my question was specifically geared towards the situation between PPI and the German Bundesland parties. There are certain similarities with Spain, as there is a national main party, and regional main parties, and the latter can become members of the national party. As you noted in Spain the regional parties are not members of the national parties, unlike the situation in Germany. So Bavaria, Hesse and Lower Saxony would already be indirect members of PPI through PPDE, even if they would not be (or strive for) observer membership.</div>
<div>I am supporter of regionalization, so I personally think that a lot of good can come through these observer memberships. But I wanted to have a discussion about how far we should take that before we get PPs of Dutch provinces, Austrian Bundesländer, Swiss Cantons or German municipalities applying for observer memberships, too. Especially in the last case it could become problematic.</div>
<div>That was what I wanted the discussion to be about, I did not mean to question the merit of having CAT (or Galicia) as observer members.</div><div><br></div><div>As to your other question: That would have to be discussed. It would be fair from a democratic point of view to then allow the state parties of PPDE in as ordinary members as well (as the one country one vote rule makes the opinion of one German pirate obviously much less important than the opinion of one Luxembourgian pirate from that point of view) (this obviously does not take into account that the big number of German members could influence the Luxembourgian member with other means).</div>
<div><br></div><div>I think the 'one country, one vote' rule makes sense as far as PPI in its intended role is concerned, and a long as we don't have pirate parties in places that are much more like a war zone than anything we have in Europe. Maybe PPES, PPCAT and PPGAL could found an association called something like 'federation of pirate parties in Spain' and exercise their PPI voting right together through a body like that (that is specifically created for dealing with PPI, and not for internal politics). This could be a way for the spanish pirate parties to play within the current ppi system (which, again, makes sense imo). Exceptions to the rule and trust in the common sense of the members makes sense, too, though. So changing it that in exceptional cases 1 country - 1 vote could be overturned.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I think a European Pirate Party should not have a one country, one vote policy, btw (but a bicameral system would make sense), so what was proposed for PPI makes sense for a possible PPEU.</div><div><br>
</div><div>-J</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">2012/3/2 Kenneth Peiruza <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kenneth@pirata.cat">kenneth@pirata.cat</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
Hi Justus,<br>
<br>
Yes, Galicia can't get ordinary membership with current statutes,
however, the situation in Spain is quite different of that in
Germany. It's closer to the one in Italy with PP-IT and PP-SudTirol.<br>
<br>
At least 7 Spanish regions have a mother tongue different than
Spanish and represent a 40% of the Spanish population. That doesn't
happens in Germany.<br>
<br>
We have 3 regions with a significative % of voters not feeling
Spaniards (or not so much) in Spain: Catalonia <br>
, Vasque Country and Galicia. In a minor %, you have Asturias,
Navarra, Valencia and Balearic Islands, then you have the rest of 17
autonomous regions.<br>
<br>
In Catalonia and Vasque country, over 55% of people votes always for
non-spanish parties, sometimes up to 65%.<br>
<br>
The Spanish commies (IU, Izquierda Unida) fixed this by creating a
confederation: One party in Catalonia and it's brother outside it
(ICV + IU) and this is the model we're pushing forward in PP-CAT.
Most Spaniard commies vote happily to ICV in Catalonia, whilst most
Catalan commies vote ICV as well. Years ago, it was all IU. After
organizing like IU+ICV, commies increased a 50% its voters in
Catalonia.<br>
<br>
That is our idea: work together in International and state-wide
issues, and organize independently on each region whenever possible
(general elections are done region by regions in Spain, as in many
countries).<br>
<br>
Samir (and I can't tell if Marcel as well) pointed out that we
should sort-out this situation in Spain. He proposed PP-ES to loose
its full membership status and urged PP-ES + CAT ( and now + GAL as
well ) to create an umbrella organization which would be the
full-member of PPI.<br>
<br>
That would make sense, as PP-CAT is 3.5 times bigger than PP-ES,
it's a bit weird that they have full-membership status whilst we
simply can't.<br>
<br>
There's a Spanish pirate for every 225000 Spaniards whilst there's a
Catalan pirate for every 9966 Catalans... Moreover, we have the only
2 pirate representatives of Spain. On the last Spanish general
election (November 2011), over 90% of the Pirate votes were for
PP-CAT...<br>
<br>
PP-ES has had several internal issues in the last years... It looked
like its new bureau was fixing it, but suddenly it fucked up and got
frozen again... Sadly, PP-ES hasn't taken profit of its potentiality
since 2006.<br>
<br>
That's the key reason why new regional pirate parties arise in
Spain. Most of us aren't secessionists (PP-CAT has a % of
secessionists similar to that in Catalan society), we just try to
make our job in the most efficient possible way. Expect others to be
created as well over the next years if PP-ES donesn't fixes it's
statute and internal democracy issues (working on it since 2009...).<br>
<br>
Forget about PP-CAT integrating into PP-ES, there's no way. Even if
PP-ES fixed its statutes and internal democracy issues, at least 50%
of PP-CAT members wouldn't be part of a Spanish party, and thinking
in election results, a huge % of we would decline the offering. So,
we need another way.<br>
<br>
PP-CAT and PP-GAL are pushing for a Pirate Confederation in Spain,
to define basic rules for common candidatures (like EU parliament's
one), where PP-ES can have federated regional parties like Madrid,
Andalucia or whoever wants, whilst others can choose to become
members of the confederation, being PP-ES itself one of the
confederation members.<br>
<br>
However, internal work in PP-ES is terribly slow, thus, if we can't
agree something before PPI's GA, we will probably propose an statute
modification, changing "country" for "territory", so, PP-CAT and
PP-GAL would be able to achieve full membership status.<br>
<br>
This modification would ease the integration of parties PP-CAT and
PP-GAL into PPI, by PP-ES confirming that it's not going to present
candidatures/lead activity in these territories, and easing the
admission of new PPI members in places like Palestine,
Turkish-Kurdistan, Irak's Kurdistan and so on, which lack a state
but have completely independent politics of Israel, Turkey or Irak.<br>
<br>
Would you like/support such a statute modification?<br>
<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
<br>
Kenneth Peiruza<br>
Pirates de Catalunya<br>
<a href="http://pirata.cat" target="_blank">http://pirata.cat</a><div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 02/03/12 02:49, Justus Römeth wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">Thank you for posting Lola! And thank you Pat, Lola
and Thomas for doing a job 6 people were elected with 3 people!
<div><br>
</div>
<div>One question: How could Galicia get ordinary membership,
though?<br>
<br>
And another would/could/should be: Is observer membership by the
German state parties something PPI welcomes, or do you merely
accept it (as there is a paralell with the situation in Spain)?
How about local chapters (Pirate party of Hanover, pirate party
of Frankfurt, ...)? Maybe this point merits discussion during
the GA (in the unlikely event we run out of topics).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-J<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 1:06 AM, Lola
Voronina <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lola.voronina@pp-international.net" target="_blank">lola.voronina@pp-international.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>Fellow Pirates,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Enclosed is a link to the minutes of the last PPI board
meeting: </div>
<div>
<a href="http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Board_Minutes_2012-02-28" target="_blank">http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Board_Minutes_2012-02-28</a>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We also updated the conference page: <a href="http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Conference_2012" target="_blank">http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Conference_2012</a>.
The next PPI conference will take place in Prague on 14-15
of April. We are currently working on a program (here is a
draft: <a href="https://ppi.piratenpad.de/ppi-conference-agenda" target="_blank">https://ppi.piratenpad.de/ppi-conference-agenda</a>)
and invitations.</div>
<div><span style="line-height:19px;font-size:13px;font-family:sans-serif">If
you want to submit any statute amendment or other
proposal add it to the proposal page: </span><a href="http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Conference_2012/Proposals" target="_blank">http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Conference_2012/Proposals</a> <span style="line-height:19px;font-size:13px;font-family:sans-serif">or write
to </span><i style="line-height:19px;font-size:13px;font-family:sans-serif"><a href="mailto:board@pp-international.net" target="_blank">board@pp-international.net</a></i><span style="line-height:19px;font-size:13px;font-family:sans-serif">.</span></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Best regards,</div>
<div>Lola Voronina,</div>
<div>Chief Administrative Officer, Pirate Parties
International</div>
<div>
<div>International Coordinator, Pirate Party of Russia</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
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