PPEU wiki

Meeting 17 of the PPEU council 24.11.2024, 09:30 CET/08:30 UTC

Meeting is in hybrid form, taking place in Prague and online
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgiLKqO0aYY

Members of the Board
C: Florian Roussel
VC: Marek Barbuš
VC: Sara Hjalmarsson
TR: Alessandro Ciofini
BM: Giuseppe Calandra (cal)
BM: Jan Mareš

International delegates
MEP delegation: Delegate X, 2 votes: absent
Pirati: Marco Confalonieri, 1 votes: present
PP-CAT: Exile, 1 vote: present
PP-CH: Jorgo and Pipo, 1 vote: present
PP-CZ: Raman Ojha, 3 votes: present (10:30)
PP-DE: Lukas Küffner, Thomas Gaul, 2 votes: present
PP-FI: Maija Raudaskoski, Pirati, 1 vote: present (10:25)
PP-FR: Sebastien Peugnet, 1 vote: present
PP-GR: Thanasis Chantzios, 1 vote: present
PP-IT: Delegate X, 1 vote: absent
PP-IS: Björn Leví Gunnarsson, 3 votes: present
PP-LU: Delegate X, 3 votes: absent
PP-NL: Edy Bouma and Wietze Brandsma, 2 votes: presents
PP-SE: Philip Johansson 1 vote: present
PP-SI: Delegate X, 1 vote: absent
PP-SK: Delegate X, 1 vote: absent
YPE: Samuel Enenkl, 2 votes: present (10:25)

Standing invitations
Mattias Bjärnemalm, Pirate Parties Network Officer

Observers:
PP Potsdam : Bastian
PPDE: Borys Sobieski
PP Bavaria : Julius Küffner (10:27)

Meeting opened at: 9:49 CET
Meeting chaired by: Mikuláš Peksa
Secretary for this meeting: Alessandro Ciofini, Sara Hjalmarsson
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgiLKqO0aYY
Pad: https://etherpad.pp-international.net/p/Minutes_of_the_17th_council_meeting
RoP: https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=ppeu:council:rules

Participants:

C: Florian Roussel
VC: Marek Barbuš
TR: Alessandro Ciofini
BM: Giuseppe Calandra (cal)
BM: Jan Mareš
MEP delegation
Pirati Marco Confalonieri
PPCAT Oliver Herzig
PPCZ Raman Ojha
PPCH Jorgo Ananiadis
PPCH Pipo
PPDE Lukas Küffner
PPDE Thomas Gaul
PPFR Sebastien Peugnet
PPGR Thanasis Chantzios
PPFI Maija Raudaskoski
PPIS Björn Leví Gunnarsson
PPNL Edy Bouma
PPNL Wietze Brandsma
PPSE Philip Johansson
YPE Samuel Enenkl

Guests:

Mattias Bjärnemalm, Pirate Parties Network Officer


PiratesOnAir

Agenda: 1. Meeting administration a. Opening of the meeting and registration of delegates, on site and online
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. Treasurer report
b. Applications for 18th Council Meeting

3. Board Election Preparation
a. Nominations assessment
b. Presentation of Candidates to the two Board Member positions
c. Questions to the candidates

4. Decisions and discussions
a. Budget 2025
b. Board Proposal on the structure of the organization administration and associated recruitment
c. Board call for the collective rebuilding of the European Pirate Party: welcoming declarations of needs, projects and plans from Members and individual pirates
d. PPGR motion submission against the ongoing Palestinian genocide by the Israeli regime

5. Election of board Positions : Two Board Member Positions
b. Votes

6. Closing of the meeting
6a. AOB
6.a1. Endorsement of the Stop Destroying Videogames ECI
6.a2. Presentation by Mikulas on work done to promote the pirates
6b. Final greetings

—

Minutes:

1. Meeting administration 1a. Opening of the meeting and registration of delegates, on site and online

The meeting was opened at 09:48

1.b. Welcoming remarks from the European Pirate Party chair

1.c. Election of meeting chairs and minute takers

Mikuláš Peksa was elected as meeting chair

Alessandro Ciofini and Sara Hjalmarsson were elected as minute takers

1.d. Approval of the agenda

12 in favour, 0 against, 0 abstain
The agenda was approved

2. Updates 2.a Treasurer report

The treasurer reported on the 2024 financial report.

Link to the 2024 financial report: https://wiki.ppeu.net/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=ppeu:2024_current.pdf

Since the board meeting, PPGR have paid their fees, so the income is greater than it was during that meeting.

We spent our emergency funds for the first time, on the following:
- Funding elements related to a workshop to develop a future vision for the PPEU
- Mission to Germany for negotiations about managing IT resources

No questions were received from the participants.

2.b Applications for 18th Council Meeting

As of now, there are no applications for the Feb. Council Meeting. Please reach out to us if you would like to propose to host the next Council Meeting.
Deadline is Dec. 11th 2024.

Potential Dates for the 18th Council Meeting : 21-22 Feb, or 28 Feb-1 March

3. Board Election Preparation 3.a Nominations assessment

No questions.

3.b Presentation of Candidates to the two Board Member positions

The candidates presented themselves to the meeting.

Candidates:

- Babak Tubis https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/candidacy-babak-tubis/785
- Björn Levi Gunnarsson https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/candidacy-bjorn-levi-gunnarsson/783

3.c Questions to the candidates

Marco: to Björn, do you think you will have enough time in case you'd be elected?
Björn: yes, for a board member position, I will have time for sure.

Thanasis:
I would like to know what the candidate's take is on:
- The far right threat
- The Israel-Palestinian conflict
- The use of western weapons in Ukraine for fighting Russia

Babak: About the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The way both sides are dealing with this war is not appropriate. There was a solution in the past before Arafat died. To find a new, peaceful solution is a task of it's own, but it has to be peaceful or it won't last. I don't care who's the attacker. They are both wrong.
About the Ukraine-Russian conflict. Use of western weapons. Countries have a contract with each other. The aggression came from Russia. Russia must withdraw and go back to following the contract that all countries have agreed to follow.
About the far right threat: There are real reasons why people have to move, but guns at the borders are not a sustainable solution. We have to work together globally. I might have an opinion, but I have people who have a better knowledge than me. I will always ask them for information and then check if that's appropriate and see if there's a way to create a world for the people who come after us.

Björn: Iceland is a small country with no weapons and can't really be a part of this process. Russia is an aggressive state and should answer to that in every possible way.
Israel-Palestine: There is a genocide happening: the response to the Hamas attack is in no way proportional to what is required in International law.

Alessandro: Do you feel that you are representing your respective pirate party or that you are a servant of the whole movement?

Babak: If I'm talking as a member of the PPEU board, then I always have to check and talk about the standpoint of the PPEU
Björn: I consider myself as a servant in my role as a board member

Exile: Do you have any contacts with International pirates organizations such as PPI or other NGOs?

Babak: nothing
Björn: nothing either

4. Decisions and discussions

4.a Budget 2025

Alessandro: We have been discussing this budget, but not had a final vote because I want to have this discussion with you all involved, just in case there are budget points that must be approved before the next council meeting.

Link to the tentative budget:
https://wiki.ppeu.net/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=ppeu:2025_tentative-budget.pdf

The increase in emergency expenses is to ensure adequate room for addressing emergencies related to council meetings.\

Lukas: The budget is mostly composed of the member fees. Do you plan to also run a fundraising campaign considering we are currently spending more than we are getting?

Alessandro: We tried to open an OpenCollective account with Florian last year, but there were issues with it. It wasn't just bureaucracy. We could do this, but we have never succeeded. We also have to consider the political implications of a fundraising campaign. The council can give the board a political vision where this can help us raise funds.

Mikuláš: We could raise the fees, but I'm not in a position to recommend anything because I am not the chair anymore.

Marek: Can we ask the MEPs to help fund us?

Mikuláš: There are rules controlling this. You can not use the money from the parliament to fund your party. [ party] has successfully raised enough funds to keep 7 staff members

Lukas: Currently we have €10,000 on our account and we are spending €3,000. I agree with Alessandro, that we should try to find options that consider the political implications. We have heard several ideas, but this is not the right place for an extended discussion.

Alessandro: The fees were reduced from €300 per vote to €50 to increase the chance of getting the payments in. If we want operational funds, we should find another option.

https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/17th-council-meeting-2025-budget-vote/798
Tentative budget vote:

- In favour: 18
- Against: 0
- Abstain: 0

The tentative budget was approved

A merging of points 4b and 4c was proposed.
The proposal was approved and points 4b and 4c were merged into 4b.

4.b Board Proposal on the structuring of the organization administration and associated recruitment, and the collective rebuilding of the European Pirate Party : welcoming declarations of needs, projects and plans from Members and individual pirates

Florian explained the motions, starting from the latest: there is a soft consensus that PPEU needs to be more open and so we need more persons in. A new tentative structure could help us to achieve future goals.
https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/building-the-european-pirate-party/799

Lukas: I think we had the same discussion in the YPE. We thought we had to create more titles toget more people to do stuff. Another thing I want to propose is to look for interns who want to get experience or exposure in exchange for free work. Otherwise the board is doing everything, which is not ideal. The board should be delegating, not doing everything themselves.

Marco: It is my understanding that the topic will be put up and the proposal will be submitted to the next council meeting too.
Mikuláš: This time 'round it is a discussion point. We do not have a formal motion to vote on.
Exile: As we are going through a brainstorm. Instead of nominating delegates for each council meeting, we should have standing delegates between council meetings who can work on proposals.
Marco: there is a thing that I consider quite pressing that would require collaboration . That is the AI topoic. The EU AI act is quite tame on this point. There is a lot of stuff that is not consistent with AI, such as consumer protections, but I'm not sure that this is the right place for it because it can also be done through collaboration between individual pirates.

Lukas: Is there a platform where people can gather to discussed topics, such as discourse, or is there a plan to set up something like that?

Alessandro: It is great that we are doing it asynchronously online. The only moment that I saw a great effort materialize was in Strasbourg. We were there for 2 days. We were able to produce something. This process is even more important and even more challenging because it isn't a political proposal. We should delegate tasks because if we have a schedule we will get it done. I agree 100% with Florian that we need to rebuild our movement, but we can't just talk about it, we need to do. We must imagine what we want to see and then work on it.

Florian: It will be introduced online on Discourse and in a form.

4.d PPGR motion submission against the ongoing Palestinian genocide by the Israeli regime

Thanasis: As the pirate party of Greece, we strongly believe that the PPEU has refrained for too long to take a political stance on the conflict in Gaza and the west bank, and on the expansion of Israel. The conflict between Israel and Iran was supported by the US. It is better to be late than sorry.

Firstly, we should take a stance to provide food and support to the victims of this conflict.
And also, it was a last-minute decision that the International criminal court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Nethanyahu and Yoav Gallant who are the main people responsible for this war. We oppose the systemic violence in Gaza
We confirm our commitment to international law
We denounce the threat to the sovereignty of all
We should discuss options for pursuing a peaceful resolution and since there are time constraints to council meetings, the board should propose a dedicated council meeting to discuss this topic.

Philip: personally, I don't see anything objections, but I wonder why this should be done at the collaborative level, rather than by each local party. This just seems like we are removing the option for national parties to do it on their own. What is the rationale?

Mikuláš: I think it is procedurally admissible, but it is something that should be decided by the council on a case-by-case basis

Thanasis: Every member participating in the pirate party has the right to make their own statement, but we in PPGR believe this will send a message to the world about what pirates stand for and what we are trying to achieve.

Marco: This goes a bit beyond the traditional pirate topics. I would need to bring this up locally. We also need to be very careful with how we word this. It is a very heated topic, so to avoid misunderstandings, we need to be very accurate.

Mikuláš: We understand your proposal is to postpone the voting until next council meeting and establish a working group to work on the wording?

Marco: Yes

Alessandro: The working group should go beyond wording. We shouldn't be afraid to talk about divisive topics, there are plenty of them. However, the thing is we can do 2 things - either we avoid divisive topics or we respect each other and we address divisive topics in a constructive way. If you ask if we approve or not, my answer is not, not because we disagree, but because it has not been thought through. Behind council votes there were committees and groups working on the topic. We can not avoid the complexities by over-simplifying. I'm against all deaths - Palestinian, Ukrainian, Israeli, it's a massacre out there.

Thanasis: I wanted to propose what Marco and Alessandro want to do, but we did not have a lot of time to put together a motion. The previous one also had some problematic wording. We will probably need to submit motions earlier. Just to let everyone know: the pirate party of turkey suddenly emerged out of nowhere and we tried to reach out to them, Tunisia, Catalonia, etc. to create a Pirate Party of the mediterranean group. The Pirate Party of turkey disappeared. The pirate party of Israel never reached out to us. We only received responses from PPFR and Pirates from Italy, so we didn't proceed. For this reason, we believed that the Pirate Party of Israel didn't exist. Perhaps our idea can be reformed with the pirate party of Israel if they really exist, I don't know.

Mikuláš: Do I understand that it is acceptable for you that we proceed with postponing the vote on the motion, and discussing a working group on it?

Thanis: If we are going to postpone it, at least provide a statement, could we have at least a vote on condemning the genocide?

Mikuláš: can we put this to a vote?

Marco: Pirati takes the position that this needs to be postponed to the next council meeting. The PPGR were invited to write the proposal that we will vote on.
Mikuláš: I would like to encourage the PPGR and PPEU to contact the Pirate Party of Israel to be involved because they are a strong voice in Israel.

Marco: One of the common misconceptions you see in the media is that this issue started with thte Hamas attack on Oct. 7th. There has been an ongoing conflict in the area for over 60 years. For this reason, we can't just start with a single point in history. We must view it in the context of the whole conflict.

Now we are voting on postponement, yes or no
https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/17th-council-meeting-ppgr-resolution-course-of-action-pirati-proposal-vote/800

For: 14
Against: 1
Abstain:3
YPE abstains due to the unclear formulation of the motion.

Voting on whether there should be a statement
https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/17th-council-meeting-ppgr-resolution-course-of-action-ppgr-proposal-vote/803

In favour: 4
Against: 5
Abstain: 7

As there must be a simple majority, this proposal has been rejected.

5. Election of board Positions : Two Board Member Positions

https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/17th-council-meeting-board-members-election-vote/797
5b. Votes:
Babak: 16
Björn: 18

Both candidates were elected as board members

6. Closing of the meeting

6.a AOB

6.a1 Endorsement of the Stop Destroying Videogames ECI https://discourse.european-pirateparty.eu/t/17th-council-meeting-agenda-point-6a1-any-other-business-endorsement-of-the-stop-destroying-videogames-eci/786
This is the link of the ECI as well: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/eci

Mikuláš: Does the council want to have an indicatory vote?
Lukas: this should be a no-brainer. The German pirates have already supported them and so should the PPEU.
Raman: I would like to ask about the viability of the citizen's initiative. How will it look in practice? Is there a time-limit? Should old games be supported indefinitely? How will it be viable for the creators?
Florian: The initiative will provide a proposition for how this will be resolved. It is too soon to know what the legislation will look like at this point. The current step is to get it above the threshold.
Marco: The ECI proposals must be quite generic because they are not laws in themselves. They are initiatives. If the threshold is reached, the European commission must present it to the parliament or strike it down. Either way, there will be a public discussion on the matter. The details would therefore be a later matter.

Thanasis: We believe that this should also be cause for more collaborative efforts for all our parties. I am in favour, but we could formulate a better reasoning about why we support it.

Florian: That's a very good point. The ECI organisers are very aware of all these points, endorsing this proposal would be the first point of contact for all people that care about this topic.

An indicatory poll was conducted in Jitsi:

The European Pirate Party Board should support the European Citizens initiative called Stop Destroying Videogames

- Yes: 9
- No: 0

Chair is now transferred to Florian

6.a2 Presentation by Mikuláš on work done to promote the pirates

The Czech pirates have created votemap.eu for better understanding how the MEPs have voted. The site automatically converts voting data into human-readable graphs. The internet can provide this data to EU citizens with the help of machine translation (eg. Deepl). We don't have the resources to spread this, so we encourage you to spread and use this tool. You are free to share it. The more you share it, the happier we are. It is a work in progress, but it can help everyone in their outreach initiatives.

Lukas: I just want to clarify whether you will send out data and user details to us.

Mikuláš: We can provide the code to share it in social media. I'm not sure exactly how the financing will be managed yet. I would like to apply for some public funds and make it into a public good. At the end of the day it is good if you do not have to use your party resources to pay for it.

6.b Final greetings

Meeting closed at: 13:36 CET
Next council meeting: scheduled for Feb. 2025