PPEU.Statutes meeting minutes

Location:  Potsdam, TPZ, Display 3
Minutes:   Everyone
Start:     28.07.2012 10:00 CEST
End:       29.07.2012 16:00 CEST
Approved:  Pending

1. Administration
2. Goals
3. Structure
4. Competences
5. Ressources

1. Muriel (PP-CAT)
2. Kai Gödde (PP-DE)
3. Mattias (Mab) Bjärnemalm (PP-SE)
4. Stefan Thöni (PP-CH)
5. Anders Bernard (PP-DE)
6. Andreas Böttcher (PP-DE)
7. pakki (PP-DE)
8. Krishna (PP-DE)
9. Martina Pöser (PP-DE)
10. Daniele Monteleone (PP-IT)
11. Luciana (PP-IT)
12. Julia Reda (PP-DE)
13. name (PP-XX)
14. name (PP-XX)
15. name (PP-XX)
16. name (PP-XX)
17. name (PP-XX)
18. name (PP-XX)

To promote the interests of its members and the values of the pirate movement, restricting itself to:

1. Stronger cooperation between the different European Pirate Parties
2. To coordinate policy between the Pirates of Europe
3. To identify and promote common policies / manifesto
4. To support the process of finding political consensus between different Pirate Parties in Europe
5. To strengthen the Pirate movement in the Union and throughout Europe
6. To coordinate election campaigns for the EU parliament on request by the parties
7. To organize paneuropean assemblies / conferences / conventions
8. To offer a contact for the European institutions and representatives
9. To support & represent all Pirate Parties in the EU as a whole, if necessary → better representation by PPEU where the parties have a say than independant MEPs
10. To broadcast policy decisions taken by the different European Pirate Parties and stimulate discussion of these to pirate parties all over Europe (PP-SE disagrees with this goal?)

1. Membership is possible for every Pirate party independently organised on a regional, national or European level, voted on by the Council.
2. Members will elect delegates.
3. One-Chamber-System
4. Operated by functionaries yearly elected by a Council based on the Pirate parties
5. Auditors are elected yearly by the Council
6. Neither functionaries nor auditors can be delegates, so must be replaced if elected
7. The functionaries make up the “Board” of the PPEU.
8. At least one delegate per Pirate Party member
9. Enable transversal majorities: If one Pirate party has mixed feelings about a topic, let the mixed feelings add up on a European level to find out what the continental majority is: this produces better results than having US-style red and blue states (= one country one vote) → The parties can do this any way the like. The can split up, vote only one way or abstain.
10. Proposition for national weights: Until 2015: Copy of green system. Daniele will produce a table comparing this system with others, e.g. square root of contributor members divided by 20 (or another number that reduces the number of votes to a manageable size) or square root of voters of each party, consider also square root of population of each country or simply a one party one vote model (send info to mailing list).
    

But: Don't use number of pirates (depends on price of membership: bad) and also don't let Pirate parties buy more influence as some may have more money

1. Setting up a seperate and informal E-Democracy-System to get non-binding opinions on PPEU topics (Using these results or those of a national e-democracy tool as a help for voting decisions by the Pirate parties delegates is optional)
2. If it is feasible considering the ressources, PPEU should change into an organisation with individual membership and membership rights or at least a second chamber shall be set up composed of individual European Pirates
3. In the situation that Pan-European elections are held, PPEU shall be changed into a real European Pirate Party

1. To communicate consented pirate policies to the public
   
2. > this is not only about press releases or other push communication but also pull
3. To perform Public Relations and interfacing Press at European level (according to program/s, in agreement with the parties, representing the PPEU but not speaking in the name of the parties
4. To improve civil participation in European policy
5. Central coordination of common European affairs (Meaning that topics from the different parties are collected and distributed to the community. The feedback is analysed, and if more then a quorum of parties agrees to the topic, it is going to become a common topic. The PPEU will never dictate topics from itself.)
6. PPEU has NO competence to reject or dismiss national delegates (Only allowed to write comments on delegates to their respective Pirate parties).
7. PPEU sets dates for meetings, sets deadlines for discussions, sets deadlines for ratification of common topics.
8. PPEU may access the members of the member parties.
9. To issue three kinds of documents:
   • Collaboration of existing documents: full competence
   • Creating a new internal document: full competence
   • Creating a new document in the name of the European pirates: only after consultancy where every member of the PPEU has the possibility to participate with ratification from every member party (Or maybe just by a decision of the Boards depending on the kind of document? Declarations? Flyers, Hand-Outs?)
10. Financial competence (on own money): full competence
11. Member policy (joining): full competence based on by laws
12. Member policy (expulsion): full competence with a very high treshold (3/4 majority)
13. Change of Statutes:
    • Constitutional parts require ratification by all parties
    • Nonconstitutional parts require 2/3 majority of the delegates

(Should be clarified in the Statutes which is which?)

1. Internal organisational structure: full competence
2. Execution of a decision: full competence
3. Representation pre-election vs. european political entities: full competence
   

(Unclear:) PPEU has proposal competence for topics in all areas, which are decided at the European level. (should not be more than half a dozen proposals per half year, the decision period)

Comply to Requirements 1.1 Sources:

1. Voting rights, ratification privileges (what's that?) and travel reimbursements are limited to member parties paying it's membership fee within the actual period
2. Members that have failed to pay their membership fees for 2 consecutive years are considered to have left the PPEU automatically
3. Don't let pirate parties buy more influence as some may have more money → But parties which get more voting weight also pay proportionally more.

1.2 Measures:

We need a donation scheme and target individuals. Donations shall be divided by general donations and specific targeted MEPs Member party fees shall not be very high, rather trying to get donations from people. We need to coordinate calls for donations to finance the European elections. Perhaps we might be getting a part of PPI's fees from the European Pirate Parties. We should also accept and ask for donations in kinds.

1.3 Costs:

The PPEU could distribute money to the Pirate party mebers for EU campaigning and to organize conventions, assemblies and conferences on European issues. The PPEU may distribute administrative costs (travel expenses etc.). We might need to buy translations. We could book rooms for simultaneous translations in the EU Parliament. We might need to pay a lawyer for examining the statutes in the country of founding / expertise and to do all formalities for us.

• Each Pirate Party needs to send at least one delegate to PPEU.
• There will be needed people to staff the Coucil and the Board and if wanted or needed, other positions or organs.
• There will be at least needed 2 coordinators, a treasurer, auditors and translators.
• For public relations we need a spokesperson and a press team.

3. Time:

• There needs to be a time slot on the Pirate parties' General Assemblies to elect delegates.
• The delegate(s) have to attend Board/Council meetings regularly.
• Pan-European discussions and voting procedures may be time-consuming.

1. (Unclear:) To convert this PPEU into a participative and basic-democratic Political Party at European Level
2. Preventing scope creep over time:
   1. Killswitch on the national assembly level, if the move into the political terrain or
   2. Only found the organisation for a certain time or
   3. Restrict competencies very formally

Type: I=Information, T=Todo, R=Resolution
Status: plank=not started/late, silver coin=in time, golden eye patch patch=done