16th European Pirate Party Council Meeting
June 23rd, online edition
Recording: https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/LTiC5mQ7qX64b8p
Participants
Members of the Board
C: Mikuláš Peksa
TR: Alessandro Ciofini
BM: Giuseppe Calandra (cal)
BM: Florian Roussel
BM: Jan Mareš
BM: Sara Hjalmarsson
BM: Petra Kovačec
Standing invitations
Mattias Bjärnemalm, Pirate Parties Network Officer
International delegates
MEP delegation: Mattias Bjärnemalm, 2 votes: present
Pirati: Eleonora Serrati Marco Confalonieri, 2 votes (1 base vote + 1 PPFI vote): present
PP-CAT: Josep Guirao, 1 vote: present
PP-CH: Pipo, Jorgo (membership applicant, 1 vote): present (joined at 11:38)
PP-CZ: Michal Gill, Raman Ojha, 3 votes: present
PP-DE: Gregory Engels, Thomas Gaul, 2 votes: present
PP-FI: delegates Marco Confalonieri (Pirati, 1 vote): present
PP-FR: François Tabuteau, 1 vote: present
PP-GR: absent
PP-IT: absent
PP-IS: Gísli Rafn, Króla, 3 votes: present
PP-LU: Mathis Godefroid, 3 votes: present
PP-NL: absent
PP-SE: Jacob Sinclair, Kevin Stenberg 3 votes (1 base vote + 2 YPE votes): present
PP-SI: Aljaž Božičko, 1 vote: present
PP-SK: absent
YPE: Delegated to Jacob Sinclair 2 votes
Observers:
PPInt: Bailey Lamon: present
PP Potsdam: Bastian, present
Agenda
1. Meeting administration
a) Opening of the meeting and registration of delegates : 11:00am CEST.
b) Welcoming remarks from the European Pirate Party chair
c) Election of meeting chairs and minute takers
d) Approval of the agenda
2. Updates
a) Notice of voting power update https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/update-of-voting-powers-and-number-of-delegates-following-the-2024-european-elections/682
3. Decisions and discussions
a) Membership applications
a1) Swiss Pirates (PP-CH)
b) Debrief of the 2024 European Parliament Elections.
b1) Country by Country presentation of results
b2) Pirate delegation in the European Parliament
c) Opening for applications to host a physical meeting for the Next Council meeting
4. Election of board Positions : Chair and both Vice-Chairs of the European Pirate Party
a) Nominations assessment
b) Votes
5. Closing of the meeting
a) AOB
b) Final greetings
1. Meeting administration
a) Opening of the meeting and registration of delegates : 11:05 am CEST.
MEP delegation: Mattias Bjärnemalm, 2 votes: present
Pirati: Eleonora Serrati, Marco Confalonieri, 2 votes (1 base vote + 1 PPFI vote): present
PP-CAT: Josep Guirao, 1 vote: present
PP-CH: Pipo, Jorgo (membership applicant, 1 vote): absent
PP-CZ: Michal Gill, Raman Ojha, 3 votes: present
PP-DE: Gregory Engels, Thomas Gaul, 2 votes: present
PP-FI: delegates Marco Confalonieri (Pirati, 1 vote): present
PP-FR: François Tabuteau 1 vote: present
PP-IS: Gísli Rafn, Króla 3 votes: present
PP-LU: Mathis Godefroid 3 votes: present
PP-SE: Jacob Sinclair, Kevin Stenberg 3 votes (1 base vote + 2 YPE votes): present
PP-SI: Aljaž Božičko, 1 vote: present
YPE: Delegated to Jacob Sinclair 2 votes
Observers:
PPInt: Bailey Lamon, Keith Goldstein, present
PP Potsdam: Bastian, present
b) Welcoming remarks from the European Pirate Party chair
Mikuláš is opening the meeting, as current chairperson of PPEU
He described a bit the election situation, remarking that the present meeting will be mostly (but not only) dedicated to the elections of all vacant positions.
Then floor is to Sara that volunteered to chair the meeting.
c) Election of meeting chairs and minute takers
Vote on charing the meeting: Sara by acclamation
Alessandro, Florian and Petra are volunteering for minute takers.
Vote on minute takers: Alessandro, Florian, Petra by acclamation
d) Approval of the agenda
Vote on agenda on Discourse
https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/16th-council-meeting-approval-of-the-agenda-vote/710
Agenda approved.
2. Updates
Voting powers have been already updated and announced during welcoming remarks.
3. Decisions and discussions
a) Membership applications
a1) Swiss Pirates (PP-CH)
Jorgo is speaking about PP-CH application. PP-CH was already a member and lost application for two consecutive years of missing payments for PPEU fees.
Alessandro is remarking that now everything is set and PPCH also already paid in advance 2024 membership fees.
Voting here:
https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/16th-council-meeting-ppch-admission-vote/713
Motion approved: PP-CH is now a member again
b) Debrief of the 2024 European Parliament Elections.
b1) Country by Country presentation of results
Pirati: we followed the previous CM mandate, to apply for elections in Italy with a single list with PP-IT. Unfortunately they proceeded alone. We presented the lists even if in the meantime Italian laws changed and we then very rejected. We will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights due to this evident violation of the Rule of Law. This happened also in 2022 with previous government. Let's hope we will succeed.
PP-CAT: We have dropped overall in Spain from 16,755 votes to 14,442, rising minimally in percentage from 0.07% to 0.08%. This is due to the fact that the previous European elections coincided with municipal elections throughout the state and regional elections in 3/4 of the state. In Catalonia, which is our territory of action, we went from 4,882 votes to 6,217 votes and from 0.14% to 0.26%. This figure is very important, as Catalonia is where participation fell the most, from 56% to 43%, 17 points less. We are the only small party that achieves such an increase, when the majority go down, like PACMA, or go up very little, like Volt, because there are 4 other candidates, one of them that of the populist Alvise, who has took away a lot of anger.
PP-CH: not participated just help other pirates from PPDE and PPFR trying to help them
PP-CZ: this is the third European Election: 2014 (0 elected) - 2019 (3) - 2024 (1). One reason for that it could be the raise of other parties that were able to mobilize voters.
Also the entire campaign wasn't so good, including the fact that there is a big fault to be part of the current government, even if it's great to see from outside we had three ministers.
Most of the Pirate voters from the previous elections decided not to vote at all, rather than to vote for other parties. Some of our voters moved to support STAN, which had a similar EU agenda as we had. In September we will have another round of elections, no break. Let's see if we confirm the trend or not: we shall see how much European elections will be correlated to the regional elections (the strongest region we have, Prague, won't be involved in Autumn).
Recently, the ANO party has announced that they will be leaving Renew. Last time, it was them who obstructed us from joining Renew, so essentially the prospects to join Renew for Markéta are now higher (if she chooses to). Mikulaš: the negotiations are complicated by the fact, that Renew has internal bidding system for “buying” the positions within the parliament. So they cannot “promise” you anything in exchange for entering the group, they can only tell you will be allowed to buy it. Which is different excercise from the Greens (unless some workaround is found, everything is possible in politics).
PP-DE: In Germany there is no threshold (have to get over 0.6% of votes in order to get elected). We got 0.5% and PPDE now we are missing State funds (200-300K a year) so we need to think how to handle this situation. Also, we lost our MEP.
PP-FI: no report
PP-FR: With a 55k€ budget, mostly invested in the ballot papers, we did 28k votes, representing 0.11%, first time with a real campaign (not just online), lot of fun but a lot of energy spent, for basically the same results.
PP-IS: not part of EU
PP-LU: we lost nearly half of our votes, we are now under 5%. The reason is because we had a very new list for this elections, with a lot of unknown people. We tried to explain this to our voters but this message failed. The threshold is very high in Luxembourg. The elections were important in order to involve more young voters, but it didn't happen. This time also we had a lot of new parties and stronger parties got more support that we had.
PP-SE: we got worse result (from 0.6% to 0.4%). Unfortunately our questions were not focused on the media.
PP-SI: were unable to collect sufficient number of signatures due to several issues (public administration strike, etc.). Our goal is to suggest several changes to the elective system (including enabling electronic signature).
b2) Pirate delegation in the European Parliament
We have now only 1 MEP but our agreement with Greens group remains: we have to see how to handle this new situation
c) Opening for applications to host a physical meeting for the Next Council meeting
The board considers this option more suitable now, so we are now basically informing our members that applications are opened to host the next Council Meeting.
The deadline is next September 11th.
4. Election of board Positions : Chair and both Vice-Chairs of the European Pirate Party
a) Nominations assessment
b) Votes
Chair is now taking over to Mikuláš that introduces chair candidates:
- Sara Hjalmarsson
- Florian Roussel
Mathis question to Florian: how to tackle some issues that we have now? What is your vision of our party?
Florian: we should develop a very unique and participatory tool. My thinking is that PPEU should be a space of involvement for every one.
Sara: I support Florian's approach
First call CANCELLED
Vote in Discourse: https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/16th-council-meeting-chairperson-election-vote/715
Reason for cancellation: irregularities on voting rights because of unpaid membership fees.
Second REMAKE
Vote in Discourse : https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/16th-council-meeting-chairperson-election-vote-remake/720
Sara: 1Pirati 1fi 2delegation 1se 2ype 1fr 1ch 2cz 2de - 13
Florian: 1Pirati 2delegation 2ype 1fr 3lu 1cz 1si 3is - 14
Florian is elected chair of European Pirate Party
Chair is now proceeding forward to the VC, asking for introducing themselves:
Marek Barbuš
Eric Liam Bibikov
Mathis Godefroid
Sara “Beau” Hjalmarsson\
Alexander Kohler
Tim Leidig
Jan Liška
Raman Ojha
After a short presentation, chair is opening for short QA sessions (30 seconds).
Vote is on Discouse: https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/16th-council-meeting-vice-chairpersons-election-vote/721
Lukas (PPDE) will vote now on behalf of PPDE
Sara and Marek are new elected VC of PPEU.
Chair is now back to Sara.
5. Closing of the meeting
a) AOB
b) Final greetings
Marco is thanking Florian and Mikulas to help Pirati during the process of Italian elections.
Bailey suggests not to loose motivation and give up.
Florian encourages to all non elected to not give up and stay with us: you will be involved as much as possible
Bastian regrets we haven't spoken about Markéta possible change of group in the EP
Mab remarks that this is not happened and we shouldn't speculate
Mikuláš is reporting that negotiations are different from agreements
Sara also thanks Bailey for her speech
Group pictures
Meeting has been closed at 14:28 CEST