PPEU wiki

https://etherpad.pp-international.net/p/10th-Council-meeting

10th European Pirate Party Council Meeting

April, 23rd - 2022

Streaming on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7rM9w2jT8A
PiratesOnAir: https://piratesonair.net/live-stream/
Recording: https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/NZZcoNGqHQRKZAm
Members:
PP-AT Piratenpartei Österreichs
PP-CZ Česká pirátská strana
PP-EE Eesti Piraadipartei
PP-FI Piraattipuolue
PP-FR Parti Pirate
PP-DE Piratenpartei Deutschland
PP-GR Κόμμα Πειρατών Ελλάδας
PP-IS Píratar
PP-IT Partito Pirata
PP-LU Piratepartei Lëtzebuerg
PP-NL Piratenpartij
PP-NO Piratpartiet
PP-PL Polska Partia Piratów
PP-CAT Pirates de Catalunya
PC-ES Confederación Pirata
PP-SE Piratpartiet
PP-CH Piratenpartei Schweiz
PP-SL Piratska stranka Slovenije
PP-SK Pirátska strana - Slovensko
YPE Young Pirates of Europe
MEP The Pirate Group in the European Parliament

Ordinary members
Present / Absent

PP-AT: -
PP-CZ: -
PP-EE: -
PP-FI: -
PP-FR: Rodolphe Doité
PP-DE: -
PP-GR: Thanasis Chantzios
PP-IS: -
PP-IT: -
PP-LU: -
PP-NL: Hannah Boute, Mark van Treuren
PP-NO: -
PP-PL: -
PP-CAT: -
PC-ES: -
PP-SE: -
PP-CH: -
PP-SL: -
PP-SK: -

Observer members
Pirati: Giuseppe Calandra
PP-RS: Dalibor Marinovic

Present Board Members:
Chair:
Mikuláš Peksa
Vice Chair:
Florie Marie
Alessandro Ciofini
Treasurer:
Sebastian Krone aka Bastian
Board Members:
Cedric Levieux
Etienne Evelin (PP-FR)
Petr Kocourek (PP-CZ)
Jan Mareš (PP-CZ)

Absent Board Members Jasmin Feratović

Proposal agenda
Saturday 23.04.2022
10:00 registration of delegates and election of CM chairperson
10:30 introduction from PPEU chairperson and approval of the agenda
10:45 report from the board + project presentation + Q&A
11:45 discussion about voting system (asynchronous tool)
13:00 lunch time
14:00 motions (debates and vote)
15:00 political situation in Europe
16:30 AOB
17:00 final greetings

######################################## -Procedure-
Meeting started by Mikuláš Peksa at 10:05 CEST

1. Registration of Delegates and Election of CM Chairperson\ Cedric Levieux, Mikuláš Peksa: chairperons
Alessadro, Petr: minute takers, secretaries
Bastian: video streaming

2. Introduction from PPEU chairperson and approval of the agenda
Mikuláš st 10:48 is asking the members to start the meeting.
Agenda is now on the table

Mikuláš: Presenting the negotiation with the Green Party. The negotiation is not progressing much ahead. There is currently a process running creating a new position in Brussels: Network Officer for Pirate Parties Campaigns and Outreach Unit Contractual Agent. The administration of procurrement is currently in running. The task is to provide support and collect feedback from the PP and effectively to coordinate the colaboration.
Second point: registration of PPEU as a political party. There were few meetings with parties with similar goals. There has been a progress in Hungary for a new observer member. Besides of that, there hasn't been other agreement. A Latvian Party, Progressive, has been contacted but has already made connection with the Green Party. Other parties contacted were from Denmark, Romania, and Croatia. None of these negotiation succeeded as of yet. Therefore, we will need to reiterate the process of contacting potential new members
Third point: Code of Conduct Council, we have not managed to elect members and there has been challanges as of its powers. We might need to discuss how to progress on the issue today.
Forth point: Testing instance for Discourse as a possible asynchronous discussion tool. Everybody should be invited to test it and to provide their feedback on this tool so we could deploy a production server. https://discourse-test.european-pirateparty.eu/
Fifth point: Asynchronous voting system. We saw during the recent times that we need to be able to take decision in a more flexible way and thus we need a tool for it.
Sixth point: There is a proposal for the change of European electoral law to redefine the rules for European elections. The vote shall happen in EP in May. This might have significant consequences for our role in the elections in 2024. We need to discuss our position and implementation of it.
Furthermore, there is a PP-GR proposition to discuss a creation of the Working Group on Extradition of Julian Assange.

None is opposing so agenda is approved.

3. Report from the Board + Project Presentation + Q&A
Mikuláš: Reporting on the PPEU Board.

Rodolphe: We are looking forward to the recruitment process of the new position and to the collaboration with the chosen person.

Cedric: Presenting the test instance of Discourse (a purely testing phase of the tool for our purposes, no data retained for the future) and Discourse in general.

Alessandro: Maybe, we can plan to take the decision on Discourse during our next Council Meeting (September). We should not miss the opportunity to use this tool in all its possibilities.

Mikuláš: My idea for the future steps is to set up a working group for the issue, collecting the feedback, and prepare the status changes necessary for the incorporation of the tool and for the asynchronous voting system. The goal would be to have the changes prepared for the next council meeting.

Mark: Is it correct that it is paid after the trial version?

Mikuláš: We will deploy our own instance after passing through the testing version, i.e., run it on our own server.

Cedric: Correct, Alessandro purchases a server instance and we will manage it ourselves. There is then only the cost of the server. We own the data even for the test instance.

Alessandro: For now, I am the only one operating the server on my own (and taking care of the costs). At the end of the process, it will all be officially under PP-EU service with all the compliances and owning our data. We will not have the SaaS options.

Cedric: There is a lot of options within Discourse. The used email addresses are available only to the supervisors and there are other options. They are shared with the system but I had hid them! There should not be any privacy issues. Don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any issues in this regards.

Mikuláš: It is possible to connect Discourse with Single Sign On request. How many parties present here are using a tool like Single Sign?

Cedric: In France, we reach the real Single Sign On right now. For the moment, there is some synchronisation between this database and RedMine. We did not, for the moment, synchronise Discourse and this database. The reason is that you cannot register yourself into Discourse without being in this kind of database, at the moment. In July, we plan to restart the process of Single Sign On. From time to time, we have Single Sign On and at some points we don't.

Mikuláš: I am asking it because of the option to “federalize” the identities supervision: using parties' own SSO option in signing in and using thus the credentials of own party for the PPEU infrastructure.

Mark: We use a lot of different platforms: Signal, Mattermost, Discord, etc. It would be easier to use one log in into the systems. It is a project to start soon and we are quite streched as it is. I am not sure if we have the capacity for this right now.

Mikuláš: There is a possible volunteers option to support the connection process. There is a PPEU IT group focusing on the support. There is a person, Panda, working on maintaining our systems and as well working for the EP PP tasks. There are as well some IT people in PP-CZ that can help.

Mark: Can I get contacts on these people to get some help for this project?

Mikuláš: Yes, let's connect you.

Bastian: There is already an email list to this matter: int-tec@lists.european-pirateparty.eu

Alessandro: This is one of the advantages of tools as Discourse. It could also help with coordination such as this

Mikuláš: We should also have an email list for people that will not participate in the PP-EU Discourse to be able to reach them.

Bastian: There is also the wiki support to this topic.

Mab: Would it be possible for the member parties to use the same Discourse instance for their internal party discussions?

Mikuláš: Yes, I think so.

Cedric: Yes, it is possible to share the PP-EU instance for other Pirate Parties. Now, I am presenting the group administration & moderation.

Mikuláš: There does not seem to be many objectios against Discourse. Thus, let's move to the next point of the agenda.

Mark: I communicated the proposal to our ICT team and I will contact you if/how we can use this system.

4. Discussion about the Voting System (Asynchronous Tool):

Mikuláš: This discussion stems from the PP-EU Board and the need to react fast in some situations (before the next Council Meeting). We need a way how to ask the members their opinions before the next CM. One of the issue is that different member parties have different structures of decision making. Thus, one of the challanges is how to resolve this in respect to the proposed asynchronous tool.

Cedric: The main discussion is what do we want to use for what tasks, what are the requirements on the tool. First, we should make a decision about our expectations on the tool before discussing particular tools. Do we want a federal, asynchronous, reliable tool, etc. That is how the discussion should start.

Bastian: In my opinion, it is a good idea to have verified tools. We do not need every month a new tool We already have Mattermost and we can do everything there. Therefore, we do not need an asynchronous tool. I think we should be making our decision in synchronous meetings such as Board or Council meetings. Waiting for a decision via an asynchronous would slow us down. We have Jitsi etc. with now software requirements. That is the simpleset and best way to discuss any matter. Attending meetings has its advantages. The possible issue is that it might be dominated by some people

Rodolphe: We are not trying to replace any tool. In-person meetings should indeed not be replaced. The idea is having a complementary tool giving us additional flexibility to in in-person decision making. It will help us to be more flexible for various types of challanges that might come.

Alessandro: I think it is the opposite. I disagree with the danger of the tool being dominated by a particular group. We face challanges of our decision making process, powers of our institutions, and the situations evolving and our stands/decisions in proper timing matter. Adding this tool to our options does not mean we will not have synchronous meetings, I actually prefer this option but sometimes it is not possible and it is for sure not costless. We do not need to replace council meetings or any other. Yet, there are urgent proposals and such a tool would allow us to act in these moments. We would not loose anything, it is a proposal to augment our tools.

Mark: We collaborate quite quickly in PPI to make a statement towards the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I am not sure if I agree with Alessandro that we might not be possible to be very active and quick if there is an emergency. Actually, there are many occasions of proving being able to act quickly if needed. It would be handy though to have just one log in into all the platforms. It takes a long time to work your way into all the platforms. We could use an overview of our platforms and also we need more meetings like this to foster collaboration.

Bastian: PP-EU and PPI collaboration on our resolution towards the war in Ukraine is an example of such a collaboration. I am forced to use already a lot of tools. It is a mess. I would be happy to have just one system for making decisions but we always try to solve our personal problems with a new tool and that is not a good process.

Cedric: I understand that multiplication of tools is not a good thing. Yet, tools have their functions and each is good for a different task. For example, a voting system is good for voting. I agree that debating is important but sometimes we cannot achieve consensu and that is a moment when we need to vote. We have a lot of discussion, particularly during our Board meetings. I understand we should be preparing upfront our positions for these debates but nobody does that and hence we need the asynchronous tool. This tool would give each of us time to make up their mind about particular votes. Synchronous voting has its draw backs like this. Also, being a European party has its additional challanges, like not being able to meet in person for voting and discussions.

Florie: We can have a lot of different tools, not just only one. We need more than one tools, no single tool will solve everything. I hope we will have an asynchronous voting tool one day to allow us to vote and discuss in an asynchronous way. The important thing is to have the person in the middle of the tools. We have to work together in the process of making decissions and discuss the things we are voting on. It is important to have the time for the discussions. Voting should be the end of the process, sometimes it is possible after a discussion to come to a consensus first. An asynchronous tool would facilite this as well.

Mikuláš: Do we agree that if there is a decision making done by the parties, is it actually reasonable to expect that all the votes being published and there will never be a secrete vote? Thus, the representative has to act in the name of the party and there is thus no reason to hide the vote. As the pirate party, we adhere to the process that all the voting should be transparent.

Cedric: You are right. We need to know what are the votes. This is what we have been doing as for now at the PPEU. Thus, I don't think we need secrecy of that for now. Delegates only cast the votes in the name of their relative party. Inside the Board, we are normally to be aware of wanting to collaborate and there is normally no pressure to cast a vote. As for PP-FR, when we use electronic voting tools we need to be able to vote in secrecy as the IT is assuring the voting system and the people taking part in it.

Alessandro: The central point is not the anonymous voting possibility. I would like to have a discussion on this point, a round table, to listen the delegates. We all agree that the debate is the crucial point in our democracy. That is why adding another tool cannot be a bad thing. Shifting for voting, we should not only just counting the votes. Even when losing the vote, it is still a good thing there was the vote.

Rodolphe: I understand how difficult it is to work your way into all the tools there are but we need flexibility. There are a lot of challanges when organising voting and discussion. The most important thing to take care of is democracy thus we need to keep developing tools to ensure democracy is in action in various types of challanges. We need to be ready to fight issues and new tools can be a way to face this.

Mikuláš: One of the tasks for Boards was/is that we should implement an asynchronous voting system and/or discussion place. I propose to get inspired by the way we do it in the PP-CZ. We have one system that works like this in a good way. We need to clarify the purposes of our various tools. We do not have a consensus in this matter. We all agree we need to keep having in-person meetings. We also agree that every asynchronous voting should be preceeded by a in-person meeting. Yet, we clearly need asynchronous tools to contact members that there is an issue to take of. Using mail boxes is not efficient. Wiki is not useful for everybody. We need Mattermost for covering day-to-day communication and other pressing matters. However, Mattermost is not a good archive of past discussions. A tool better suited for discussing would be useful.

Cedric: If we want to minimize the amount of tools, there is a poll mechanism inside of Discourse.

Mikuláš: We need a tool that is able clearly to register who is voting and represting what party, etc. At some point, we have challanges where it is not advantageous to vote only as a Board. We need a process where also parties not currenlty present at the Board should be able to present their position.

Mark: We used to have a system with one log-in to get into all the platforms but it wasn't used as much recently. At the moment, we think this could be a good idea to use Discourse in this way. Altough, I believe that voting in person is very important. In NL, almost everything is resolved in consenus. We take our time to discuss the positions, disagreement/opposition is a sign that the person has something additional to present.

Mikuláš: Yes, consensu is importnat and it is important to always trying to reach it, especially in an organizaton as PPEU. Yet, even for a consensus it is important to have a way how to support the consensus, like in a way of voting. I thik we should set up a Working Group working on how to implement this decision to have an asynchronous decisions making into our Rules of Procedures. A mandatory requirement for the work of this WG is that the voting should always be preceeded by an online in-person discussion.

Alessandro: We should at least try this approach to see how it might work. We can see how it would work adding this tool and see how it will work. We have time to test it and we can see how it works if we implement little votes in this system. It would be good to have a process to communicate with all the parties. So yes, this proposed process is a good way to proceed.

Mikuláš: Is there anyone to lead the respective WGs?

Mark: If you have a list of the WGs and their tasks, then I can forward it to our members and to see if somebody is willing to help out.

Mikuláš: List of WGs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PHDEKywRR9JkxGXgRORliyrm81CnXcqyLQh_jyZH694/edit#gid=0. There is a chair of the WG Statutes Overseer, I think that would be the natural person to lead this. This person should call for meetings of this respective WG.

Thanasis: We have the current tools but in the past they have not been used well. Now, the whole discussion is about consensus. I think if there is a motion and there is a question about disagreement and nobody disagrees then that is a “consensus”. If there is even abstaining then there is a vote, i.e., even when disagreement matter. In the end, thus, we always have to vote. In PP-GR, we have the “rule of three pirates”: three members of the party can sign a motion and express it. That initiates voting of all the party members. Thus there is raising issue and then most members try to take part in the decision making process. When passed it forces the board members to proceed with it.

Lunchbreak 13:00 - 14:00

5. motions (debates and vote):
Meeeting started again at 14:02 CEST

Thanasis: We want to propose a motion regarding Julian Assange extradition to the US by the UK court. We want to express: imagine being him, quarter of your life being in fact held hostage at an embassy or in a prison. He's been subjected to torture and psychological trauma. At this point, there is not an option to apeal the decision. The only option is for the UK Home Secretary not to sign the exctradition and only after the signature, there is an option to apeal the decision. The motion we propose is to condemn the decision of extradition by UK court by the PPEU. The second thing, we would like to engage in other actions through all the possible political bodies to object this decision and to raise awarness of his situation and of him overall. Finally, we propose a creation of a WG to this topic to futher work on possible actions to object the extradition. As an example, to organize an outreach to public and to organize protests in front of UK embassies and similar.

Mark: What can we actually do with the power that we have? With the EP Pirates?

Mikuláš: What is now being processed, Marketa from PP-CZ already prepared a letter to the UK Prime Minister urging not to proceed with the extradition. When it comes of the vote of the whole EP to sponsor a motion, we need at least 70 EP members, which is usually tricky. Even the Greens are not as helpful in this matter and clearly there is no support from right or center on this.

Mark: I thought there would be more support for JA, that's what I see in Holland.

Mikuláš: In general, we do not collaborate with the far-right. Maybe the Greens, I am not sure, I am just estimating it. As for the WG, the easiest solution is to call the people in PP-EU interested and connect with Markéta and join her efforts that have already started.

Cedric: I don't undestand why we need a motion. It is already a staple on Pirates' agenda. It is also already one of the work being done in EP by Markéta. I don't think we cannot do more than protesting. UK is no more in EP. They can do whatever they want. We must be realists. It is not in our hands.

Thanasis: About the motion itself, our idea is to pass a motion a month ahead of the extradition is to try to do our best in favor of JA. This council meeting is not only about selforganization of the PPEU. It's role is also to make actual decision about situation such as the one of JA. About being realists, I also sadly believe that we are going to see a tragic ending to this story.

Mikuláš: The problem is that currently, at this meeting, we do not have enough representatives to pass binding decisions. What can be done is a similar process of making statement as was done in the Ukrainian invasion motion. We can ask to support it.

Mark: I like the idea of the Greek Party to coordinate protests in front of UK embassies, in every country and get some attention to the issue in this way. It would also help to see how we can organize ourselves.

Mikuláš: There is the first part of the actual condeming of the decision. We would need the support of the member parties on that. The second and third part is about how to organize practical political actions to push for the stuff. There, I think, we do not need having a decision of the council. This is more a matter of volunteers to make it happen.

Thanasis: I agree. As said “if and however possible”.

Mikuláš: So, we need a coordinator to push this agenda and try to get the member parties to participate in it.

Mark: Sounds like a great job to the newly soon to be apointed officer mentioned earlier.

Mikuláš: That might not be ready yet to do anything on time.

Mark: Alright, let's make up a date and what to do and have parties to organize their side and get some public attention to it.

Mikuláš: We need someone to organize that to figure out the actual idea and output and how to do it. Do we have a volunteer?

Thanasis: There are so many things to do in such a short time. It should begin as an effort from bottom up, from the regions. Then, we should proceed to a common action. It should be some non-violent action. I am willing to be in the position of trying to create it but I don't get it about being late.

Mikuláš: I am just trying to find a campaigner for this matter.

Alessandro: It doesn't necessarily need to be a Board member.

Mark: My idea about a WG to this issue was to make it easier to communicate and to organize. I don't understand if it is a possibility to create such a WG even later or does it require some time?

Mikuláš: WG can start working even without an aproval by the Council. Let's send out an email with a date to meet, with support of a Board member to send it in the name of the PP-EU. We can also use Mattermost for invitaiton to the meeting of the WG. I also recommend to invite Markéta and some of her folks (probably @nadia.b on Mattermost).

Mark: I have someone who'd like to coordinate this. He has contact with Stella.

Mikuláš: That would be useful. We always take into account recommendation but the procurement is to get the best qualified person. It would be good to have the person part of the team. Let's coordinate it. Thanasis and you, figure out when to meet and we will send out the email incl. the Jitsi link and you can meet there.Now, regarding the first part of preparing the text and ask all parties to support it, do we want it?

Mark: I do not wish to be a part of the process of drafting the letter.

Mikuláš: As the WG meets, you are allowed to prepare a flashmob of a kind & a statement for the PPEU social media and submit it to the Board.

Mikuláš: Any other motions? Does not seem so.

6. Political Situation in Europe

Mikuláš: Sending a link to a report: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2022-0083_EN.html approved by the committee. First of all, there will be a vote in the plenary in May and submitted to the EU Councle. The reform still has to be approved unanimously. That still has to happen. Firstly, the article 13, the Electoral Treshold for the EU level. One of the issues there are is that in Germany and Spain, there are no thresholds like this. If there was a threshold as such, Patrik would not be re-elected to the EP. We would lose our traditional seat in this way. There is a solution to this: to get at least 1mil of votes across the EU. There is also a table summiarizing the last EU elections results:
https://nextcloud.pp-eu.eu/index.php/s/AgBckkFBMT9HWmf. We have received some 850,000 votes. Now, since the situation changes, the total amount of votes matters even if there is no chance to elect a national representant. We should increase an effort to find some alies to increase the total count of votes. We can already expect loosing about 100,000 votes in CZE. On the other hand, we can expect an increase of votes in HU to make up for it, hopefully. The question now is what allies do we see? One of the solutions is to find a pan-european party with similar views as ours. At the moment, we are probably the biggest non-registered european party. That is our advantage. I see Volt having similar issue as ours, that's about 100,000 votes. It might be doable but it would be very challanges and would require a lot of effort. Other parties are either irrelevant or too far from our views.

Cedric: As I understand, there is nothing against multiple parties sharing the same european logo on their ballots?

Mikuláš: I don't think it is allowed to compete against each other.

Cedric: In this case, we might need to make some agreements and run discussions on the national level. It seems that there must be same logo but not just one. So, there might be the option in France to run with EELV (Greens)

Mab: I don't think it's possible.

Mikuláš: Usually, in Germany CDU & CSU run independently but count for the same party. So, it should work. We just need to mark them with the same logo.

Cedric: There are two possibilities. Either it is possible and then we won't have any way to force some agreements or it is not possible. One of our problem to help in the EU election is that we want to run because we want to show that Pirates are a European parties. But, how can we achieve more ballots? I am not sure what will be the actual impacts of the laws.

Mikuláš: I am not sure of the actual impact on the FR law. Also, the article 15 is important for the idea of transnational candidates. There has to be 28 candidates elected all across Europe. It should be one list for the whole EU. I don't expect anybody from us being elected via this route as it would require aprox. 7-8 mil. voters at least. However, this should be distributed in the whole EU. We should be allowed to have even the French voters to vote for this constituency.

Alessandro: Do we like the idea or not? And how we can change the status quo to fit our needs? Of course, we need to coordinate our forces. As now, we get a lot of votes in Italy but they are useless right now. Our candidates are usually completely unknown and our voters vote for Pirates. Yet, across Europe there are Pirates known and we could hone more votes for them maybe. At this point, participating is useless.

Mikuláš: The participation is not useless. Already just the ballots being distributed with our name to every postbox is an achievement. This is a way to get the name out there. There is also the possibility it won't pass but it is unlikely. There can be a veto in the Council. The last attempted was vetoed, by the Greens but they are now satisfied with the change.

Cal: It could be an advantage for use since we are the only party with a unified identity across Europe.

Cedric: I hope so….

Mikuláš: There are competitors, like Volt, with a unified identity.

Florie: There are also the Socialists, Communists, Liberals, Far-Rights, etc., they have a European identity, they also work together.

Cal: Yeah, but they are not seen as one.

Cedric: You only have to put a logo and the name common at the Europen level. If you are far right, you only vote for a person, not for the logo. It seems like a way to get rid of small parties.

Mikuláš: That seems to be the plan, yes. There seems to be many parties that can be wiped out. It's a plan to push bigger parties.

Alessandro: In Italy, it is not about ballots. We had about 60k votes for Pirates and that knowing that they are lost votes due to the already existing 4% threshold. Imagine, if we can tell them that every single vote counts! We can now say vote for us because your vote now will count, e.g., for Patrick Breyer.

Mikuláš: You are right. It is unlikely that we would get a position on the pan-European level but it is a possibility. It might still result in some good level of votes. It might amount to something somewhere. We should also be smart how to distribute the 28 posittions across EU (i.e., the positions on the list).

Mark: I liked what Alessandro said, we can promote Patrick in Holland. That could work.

Florie: In France, we had 30k votes. We didn't have many ballots but we keep growing and we hope for a lot of votes in the next elections. We will need a lot of help one way or another, for example with communication. I also want to say, that in France we won't work with the other movements. We really disagree with them. It is very difficult just to talk to them, let alone to work with them. We also see what will happen during our presidential elections. There is also another election in two months, we run in this elections (without ballots though). It might be very difficult to help you in this way on our side.

Mikuláš: Hopefully, we will have our outreach officer soon and the person will be connecting even in the regards of election. The person should coordinate this effort and support it as much as possible. I would like to again ask your opinion about this?

Florie: About Volt, we had a contact with them recently for the first time. I think we will talk to them again and possible work with them for the EU election but at this point they have even less people than we do.

Mikuláš: We will have to form a European election entity. Does it make sense now to make such an entity with a group such as the Voltes? Now we need to first make a decision whether we want, in general, to create such an entity or just to stay on our own? Particularly in regards to the NL member.

Mark: We do not work with Volt. The way they vote in the parliament makes it impossible for us. They are not democratic, not a bottom up party and so on. They kick out people they don't go along with them. We do not like them and we are not the only party with that opinion. We strongly advice against working with them.

Mikuláš: I am in a single comittee with one of them. They went in the same direction as we do and their position towards data protection is similar to ours. They also have the priority in the question of this electoral reforms. We work together on this.

Cedric: In my point of view, they are arrogant. We proposed an alliance with them in the past but they refused. Also, they are not leftist. We have some people were walking with them, it was like a patchwork. So be careful about that.

Mark: our experience with UBI wasn't much better than all the others. So it looks good, but it's not.

Mikuláš: thanks for this feedback. It's very imporatant to compare it at a European level. Into Volt, liberals were 20%, while Greens oriented almost 80%. At that point you're right. We shall be carefull. Should we talk about Diem?

Jan: Alessandro did the right definition: Diem is abandonware. They stopped everything, so we shouldn't care about them anymore. In East Europe at least it will be a bad idea.

Thanasis: in 2019, in the EU we made contact with Diem. It was supposed to be a collaboration, 7 from them and also a former pirate. We got an incredible email from Varoufakis himself, baasically a war act. I have personal connections that quit Diem, because they're not a real democratic organisation.

Florie: Diem is connected to Greens, in France. To be precise socialist in France are 1.7%. In French Diem is called “Generation”, affiliated to Greens.

Mikuláš: thanks to you all, I'm not so happy about the situation right now, just exploring all the options. So we are not really super happy about Diem. I tried to explore other options. Maybe it's the time to discuss with National parties, without involving any other pan-europeann movement. Maybe the question is to find those National parties.

Cedri: are we at the end?

Mikuláš: maybe in 2024 we have to sort out another CEEP. Do you think it's time to start the working group and let the process begin?

Cedric: yes, it's time to start. Tha't's why we need know to have and to test async tooling, discussing, voting, etc… We have almost two years, so it's now time to think about everything.

Mikuláš message delivered. Let's prepare than the process and how the programme will be devolped, also using the Second Chamber project ready. It's time again to start working.

Mark: would it help if some Dutch Pirates who worked on National election could be involved?

Mikuláš: my idea is that we as a board take the task to organise the actual CEEP and then calling for the meetings for each working group. As a board, we need to set up scaffoliding.

Cedric: it's 16:00. Is there AOB?

Alessandro: Please, check invoices and pay them! Thanks.

Cedric: I would speak about how it will work. In France, if you don't pay your fee, you can't vote. I can't understand why we can't pay at the beginining of the year, instead of the end. Today it's the mess, things are unclear. We should go this way: pay first, then vote. I can understand also the no-fee logic regaring vote rights. Last point, Petr and Alessandro will try to reach every Party to establish connections, to know you all and your finance. It's important to know what our real forces are, to understand if fees are the real problem. We need to know why this problem is happen.

Bastian: maybe all members should know by themselves which are their duties about fees,. If it's not clear, they can contact me, otherwise it will be impossible to contact you. We are not able to reach you wihout any contact. If you are missing an invoice, please reach out.

Martin: We met sometime ago with Mikuláš in Brussels and soon we will try to organize something again. If you are around, contact me and we will keep in touch and organize something about the location. The date is set, May 10th.

Mikuláš: It will also be announced on PP-EU social media.

Mikuláš: Thank you all for participating. I believe that it was a great discussion despite of not being able to pass a decision. It is good to work on mutual understanding. It was useful and provided a lot of inputs for the future work. I hope we will meet again in our next Council meeting at the end of summer.

Meeting ended: 16:28.