European Pirate Party 9th Council Meeting (22.1.2022)
Notes taken by:
Tomáš Hozman
Raman Ojha
Petr Kocourek
Streaming on:
You Tube: https://youtu.be/v45kLCs1aDU
PiratesOnAIr: https://piratesonair.net/live-stream/
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
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Ordinary members
Present / Absent
PP-AT (1): (none so far)
PP-CZ (6): Lukáš Doležal, Petr Kocourek, Raman Ojha, Veronika Murzynová, Jan Mareš,
PP-EE (1): (none so far)
PP-FI (1): (none so far)
PP-FR (1): Etienne Evellin, Cédric Levieux
PP-DE (2): Gregory Engels, Alexander Spies
PP-GR (1): Thanasis Chantzios, Penelope Petropoulou, George Kissandrakis
PP-IS (3): (none so far)
PP-IT (1): (none so far)
PP-LU (2): (none so far)
PP-NL (1): (none so far)
PP-NO (1): (none so far)
PP-PL (1): (none so far)
PP-CAT (1): Oliver “Exile” Herzig
PC-ES (1): (none so far)
PP-SE (1): Matti Brandt
PP-CH (1): (none so far)
PP-SL (1): Jasmine Feratovic (not yet present)
PP-SK (1): (none so far)
YPE (2): Matěj Bělohoubek
MEP (2): Niki Riss,
Observer members
Pirati: Eleonora Serrati
Board Members:
Chair:
Mikuláš Peksa
Vice Chair:
Florie Marie
Treasurer:
Sebastian Krone aka Bastian
Board Members:
Alessandro Ciofini (Pirati, PP-SE)
Jan Mareš (PP-CZ)
Lukáš Doležal (PP-CZ)
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Agenda
Saturday 22.01.2022
10:30 – 11:00 Registration and International delegates admitttance
11:00 – 12:00 Council Meeting chairpersons election and agenda approval
12:00 - 12:30 New members admission
12:30 - 13:30 Lunch Break
13:30 - 13:45 Presentation of all motions from ordinary members (Approval of Serbia)
13:45 - 15:00 Report from the Board and financial reports. Q&A
15:00 – 16:50 Voting on Motions
16:50 - Meeting closed for the day
?-15:40 – 16:00 Budget 2022 (including vote)-?
Open Beer room all night long
Sunday 23.01.2022
10:30 – 12:00 Presentations and elections of Chair, Vice Chairs, and Treasurer
12:00 - 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 - 15:00 Board member presentation and elections
15:00 - 15:15 Report of Code of Conduct Council. Q&A
15:15 - 16:00 CoC Council elections
16:00 – 18:15 Closing the meeting and planning the next meeting
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-Procedure-
Meeting started by Mikuláš Peksa (11:10)
1. Council Meeting chairpersons election and agenda approval
Mikuláš Peksa, Alessandro Ciofini and Etienne Evellin agreed to chair the meeting as per a previous suggestion, no objections.
Scrutiny of Votes (and taking) by Dario Castañé
2. Membership Fees and voting
Request by Mikuláš Peksa, non-paying parties to retain voting rights
Motion (1):
The board proposes deferring 2021 payment of membership fees until the second council meeting of 2022.
All members that made payments for 2021 membership have voting rights during this council meeting, January 22-23, 2022.
Motion (2):
Approval of the agenda - request for the removal of point “Invited Guests” (11:15-12:00) and the prolongment of the previous point “agenda approval and council chair selections” to 11:00-12:00.
Motion (3):
The Council agrees to reopen the nomination for Board election and CoCC election.
Swapping of points admissions for new members and report from board on the agenda.
Chairing of the meeting transferred to Etienne Evellin at 12:00.
3. New member admission of MKKP (observer status)
Gabor Vago (MKKP) presentation:
https://ketfarkukutya.mkkp.party/2019/04/22/the-two-tailed-dog-party/
Party existing for over 10 years.
Mikuláš Peksa: MKKP was chosen as one of the parties to be contacted from the side of the PPEU in the attempt to enlarge the PPEU memebership. We have found a high degree of similarity between the Pirate movements and MKKP.
Lukáš Doležal: What are the conditions for becoming an election observer in Hungary?
Gabor Vago: There is an European institutation which guarantees possibilities for high representatives like parlamentarians, or members of the EP can observe elections. It would be nice if someone from the Pirates would be there. It's only open to a limited number of people.
Jan Mareš: As a board member, I vouch for the MKKP. I've spent some time getting to know this party, and had a meeting with them and PP-CZ in 2018. I've been monitoring what they've been doing for the past 3 years, and can say that they align with PP values. Gabor is correct, there is a shift from a participatory dictatorship to a participatory democracy, which we could help with. They're in a very unique position, there are only 2 big parties challenging each other. The main alternative is far from liberal positions. The MKKP thus represents most liberal voters. The Budapest marijuana march has also been partly organized by MKKP for the past several years, replacing a lot of the NGOs who originally organised it.
Gabor Vago: I think we share a lot of values. We hope to hold the pirate flag in the next European parliamentary elections.
Cedric Levieux: Why don't you change your name to Pirate Party Hungaria?
Gabor Vago: It's our identity, and Pirate Parties aren't as well known in Hungary. I think it's better for us to do joint actions, instead of merging together.
Lukáš Doležal: Are you in touch with some of the Hungarian pirates?
Gabor Vago: There is only very few of them but yes, we are in touch.
Matěj Bělohoubek: What I found from your webpage, your program for last elections was mostly jokes, do you plan this year elections too present in your program joke points?
Gabor Vago: We are shifting from a “totally joke” party into more “policy demands” party, focusing on issues with corruption, education, e-democracy, and democracy overall.
Mikuláš Peksa: Should you be admitted, would you mind displaying a logo of the PPEU, as well as a link to it, on your website?
Gabor Vago: Yes, of course. After this decision, I can have a meeting with the board but it is a simple demand to deliver on.
Etienne suggests to vote on MKKP admission now, and move the other presentation for after the lunch break.
Motion (4):
Does the Council approve the application of the MKKP into PPEU as an observer member?
Meeting suspended for lunch break at 12:32, resuming 13:31.
4. New member admission - Serbian Pirate Party, Dalibor Пирати:
http://zelenastrankasrbije.rs/
https://thesrpskatimes.com/aleksandar-kavcic-free-textbooks-will-be-available-to-students-from-srpska-via-the-internet/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-huawei-face-recognition-cameras-serbia-other-countries-questionable-human-rights-2019-10-16/
https://www.euronews.com/2022/01/04/hundreds-of-protesters-in-serbia-call-for-an-end-to-lithium-mine-plan
https://pirati.org.rs/
Dalibor: I am here together with ??? (Johan?). We are a member of PPI since January 8th 2022. You can write any questions to us now.
Johan: We started in 2018, when we lead the Green Party to the local Belgrade elections. In the mean time, the green topics becames a staple on the agendas of the main parties but we don't think it will change anything. It is similar with other topics, like education, human rights, etc., as well. We, as a party, wants to work more on education topics. Serbia is a markets for books for pupils but the access to education was better in the past. We want opportunities for all and supporting diversity. Another topic is the digital security. There are more than 1000 chinese cameras with facial recognition around without any approval from the citizens. We need to fight for equal rights in this area. Also, regarding the civil society, the government in the last 10 years are not open to transparency issue in tender processes as well as other process such as freedom of speech. We want to fight this trend so that the future government is forced to more transparency. Other topics are social government and health care. Covid pandemic showed all the weaknesses of our healthcare system. We want to improve the area to achieve a better healthcare system. The last thing is the environmental and energy issues - the situation is very poor in Serbia, people are protesting against the government policies. There is a lot of Chinese investment into the opportunities in here. The Republic of Serbia connection to Russia and the gas provided and we need an energy independence. These are the topics we want to present on the elections in Serbia that will be in April this year. There will be local elections in Belgrade, the Serbian elections, and the presidential elections. We are open to any questions.
Mikulas Peksa: We were contacted by Dalibor already few months ago and we've been in touch and in collaboration how to interlink the European program and other PP's with theirs. This is one of the best prepared applications form PP's yet.
Cedric Levieux: Why do you only want to be observers?
Dalibor: We don't want to jump through the steps, and want to prove ourselves. This is our strategy - that we go through all the steps, fulfill all the criterias. This is the reason why we're only applying as observers for now.
Lukáš Doležal: Why doesn't your website work?
Dalibor: We're updating it for the upcoming elections, and all the data is currently with our webmaster. We're improving it and preparing our campaign. In the next few days, we're going to have everything in place.
Etienne: I propose to move to the vote.
Motion (5):
Does the council approve of the appointment of the Pirate Party of Serbia as an observer member?
5. Report from the board - Q&A
Mikuláš Peksa (Chair): Presenting a map of the current situation as an overview of the full member: CZ, GE, IS, LU, etc. Observer members, we are reluctant about the situation of Polish Pirates. There are some signs of acitivity but they haven't been seen for a while. We see a problem with the party of Estonia, there seems to be little activity from them. It was also reported that we have issues with the Spanish Pirate Party, as it's about to be dissolved in a short time. It was problematic to find their website and perceive any activity. I've been contacted by a person who would like to help with the PP-ES, but so far, has had no opportunity to work on it. We've had 2 observer membership applications which have just been approved - PP-RS and MKKP. During the registration process, we've also started discussions with other parties that we've identified as close to Pirates, and could consider joining the movement. There were suggestions including a party from Croatia and Latvia, but unfortunately, we haven't succeeded with the Latvian one so far. The Croatian one is already tied with the Greens and other EP groups, making things complicated. We've had a contact with a party from Romania [Free People Party] focusing on issues with minorities etc.,
sharing liberal values, and so far, we've had discussions about how to proceed further. We've also had talks with [The Alternative] (Alternativet) from Denmark, focusing on liberal values and environmental issues. There are also some original Pirate party members that switched to them. We've had a few parliamentary elections in the last year, but unfortunately, the Czech Pirates have only obtained 4 seats in government, making it the weakest party in government, but we have had success with the coallition agreement. We've seen a stand-alone candidacy in Germany and haven't been able to catch much media attention, resulting in 0.4%, a repeat result of the past years. Iceland has seen 8.4% but has not joined the govenment.
Norway 0.1%, likely due to
too little media attention. There were also other elections, including France and the municipial elections. Personally, I was expecting more from 2021 and the numbers are a little lower than what I would like to see, but life is harsh. As for parliamentary elections this year, there should be 4 German federal states where the Pirate Party is mostly not recognized. In Luxembourg, there are 2 seats out of 60 with 11% polls. Hungary's political system is made to give Viktor Orbán an advantage in the elections, and it's going to be hard, but the polls are at 4-7%. Another good opportunity is Slovenia with about 5%, and it's likely that their Pirate Party will enter parliament this year, which would be great. Lastly, we are running in Sweden and keeping our fingers crossed. You need an incredible amount of money to overcome the campaigns of other traditional parties, so we're at a disadvantage there - it's an uphill fight, but there are people putting in lots of effort and we're hoping for good results. Currently, we have 3 members with parliamentary representation in the EU, and another full member who should be entering parliament this year. There are potential candidates (Romania and Denmark), one unsuccessful contact (Croatia), and one potential candidate to be contacted (Latvia).
I have contacted the official representative of the Authority for Political Parties and Foundations registering European political parties and I was assured that the organization is always very accomodating. I was given a “starting package for the European political parties” with instructions. There was a disucssion about statutes, and you should understand that the political authority only deal with about 10 existing, registered parties and it's a rather small office where they do it on a case-by-case basis. There are no strict written rules describing every single detail, but more so general principles that have to be upheld. The authority decides based on concerns for each situation. You will not be able to find a clear definition of what is a “regional representation”, but they decide it based on whether the person can vote on laws. For example, this would be the case in Germany. In Czechia, regional authorities handle things like budgets, but don't necessarily have the authority to change laws. There was a suggestions in regards of the influence of the members. In order to be recognized as a member of the organization, it's not enough to claim allegiance with the organization, but the party also has to have influcence. It would be good, should the respective member representing the country be able to vote in our internal decision making. For example, if a party had an observer status, it's not sufficient from the point of view of the authority. I'm afraid that if we backed our registration attempt with some of our observer members, our application would be denied.
I have a motion coming up which would decide whether or not (member registration be in compliance with some guidelines). There was also disucssion about the second chamber, we have pages of possible solutions on things like data protection, but it's currently in Czech and we have yet to translate it into English. I think we are able to find a technical solution to interconnect the existing party systems, so that we can federate the system for sharing of permissions for voting, but we haven't deployed it as of yet.
[ Social media overview ] - We still have the same channels. On Facebook, we've grown 5% since November, 10% on Twitter, and we're also setting up a YouTube channel. It's not a fast process, but we're working on it. I'd like to thank Niki Riss, he helped with growing those channels. I think the biggest issue we're facing, should we want scale up a lot, we would need to have paid advertising. We've had some mentions of our parties in traditional media like newspapers and TV channels. In Czechia, we're very known in that type of media and one of the most visible out of the Czech MEPs, but in other countries, we're facing media silence. We do, however, talk to a lot of media all over Europe.
[ Internal systems ] - We still use the same systems. On Mattermost, we've observed a significant rise in active users. A lot of users register, but stay inactive. I'd like to thank Sebastian Krone and Panda for helping manage and set up those systems, mostly on a volunteer basis.
Sebastian Krone (Financial Report): I am reporting for the term for Nov. 2020 - today on the financial, accounting, and budgetary issues. Fortunately, in 2020 we've opened a bank account but the treasurer cannot access the account so I do not have any bank statements. I prepared a balance sheet for 2021 (https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/2RJjGADZ4w5Qctr). We have total cash: 14092,25€, outstanding fees: 3,400€, available cash: 12750,89€ and total assets: 13905,89€. We expect possible donations from the observers as well. We should have the total assets' amount to spend on our duties. My point of view is that I am alarmed that there are only 2 members that paid their fees despite of the fact that we have drastically decreased the amounts. We need more funding than that to fulfill our agenda. We also have to do something for our Social media expenses etc. My team kept the tools running, the Czech keeps the Mattermost running. There have been a lot of services running 24/7 without errors and we are proud of that. You can find more details on the PPEU dashboar. That's from me. Thank-you.
Alessandro: I don't have a direct question to Sebastian. He mentioned me directly as the former treasurer before him. I have something to say. I feel a bit unhappy for discharging/misleading regarding behaviour that is not true. For instance, I have provided everything publicly to Sebestain. I have collected all the fees. Also, there was only one invoice to be paid. I wasn't the treasurer at some point anymore and I still helped with to paid the only invoice to be paid. One of my motions in the past (in 2020) was to reduce the fee from 300 to 50 euros and still if you compare the fees collected when I was the treasurer (while being higher) there is less fee collected now than then. Please read the motion passed in the past. I think everything is pretty clear. I am really disappointed of this behaviour.
Mikuláš Peksa: I'd like to assure you there isn't much that we can blame on either gentleman. It's still partially my fault, since we face an incompatibility between what the Luxembourg business chamber offers, and what the Czech Fio Banka offers. They have certain restrictions due to the KYC principle, and need to know more from the Luxembourish side. I was trying to find a solution that would satisfy both parties, but so far, I've been unsuccessful. It's hard to convince them to provide any of the newly elected treasurers access to the account. For now, Markéta is handling it and was entrusted by the treasurers to do so, while we try to find a better solution. Perhaps an upcoming EU regulation could fix this.
Cédric Levieux: I don't have a question but a request. I see the cost of the IT systems and I see the tools that the IT system is running. I would like to have a map of the whole IT system. From my point of view, I am the technical council of the French party and the cost of the party is at least twice as it could be. You can see that for 50 euros you could have 12 parties. I would like to know what is the reason for the situation.
Sebastian Krone: I already expected a proper handover of the [unintelligible]. That's not very fair, from my point of view. Yes, we have quite a lot of costs for IT, but maybe you didn't listen to my words, they are donated. I think it's a duty to explain our donations.
Mikulas Peksa: To clarify how the structure works. There are some systems ran by the MEP's staff and the systems are open to volunteers. That is how we can use them without paying for them. There are other systems ran as expenses of Sebastian and his company and this shall be reported as expenses for the transparency. The last thing that we are actually paying from our income is the Mattermost servers. It stores a lot of our data and I can't imagine how to outsource that. An option might be a miggration to a cheaper server but it might cause issues of scale up the server in the future. There is a motion on the table to set up some asynchronous working platform, should it run on the same server, or separate ones? Doing it on the same server might cause scaling issues and also more vulnerability to cyber attacks. The main issues is that we need to run at least one server on our own expenses to be able to store it. I would definitely not outsource it to any external entity.
Cedric Levieux: It is normal to pay some services and to store our own data. There are several points. We need a full IT system. We are Pirate parties and we are from the Internet. I see a lack of information and I have a bad feeling about that. Secondly, the cost of a server from donations is very vague. If you put cost on something as donation, you can put any price on it. In France for example, we have some problems but there is no way for an enterprise to give some money to a political party. I see it as problematic to be thankful to an enterpries. What is our liberty then to use our server then.
Mikuláš Peksa: Yes, there are different sources for the IT and differences in it regarding documentations, there is yet not much documentation on these systems. As for the IT from the MEPs, we have some documentation to it. We should have such documentation for other but we were not able to provide it yet. To comment to the last part of your speech. You are right, in France a company donating to a political party is not approved but in other countries you can do that under some conditions. This is a longer discussion we've been having in the finance group and we have found some consesus. An option for the development of a transparent account. We have such a proposal now for the council developed by Sebastian and Alessandro together.
Matti Brandt: I believe PP-SE missed the meeting on the second chamber. Other issue, regarding the change of the status to gain the official European party status. Where can we find information about the two topics.
Mikuláš Peksa: The information about the process of agreeing on the principles of the second chambers were discussed in a group chat made by Exile. There were people participating from PP-FR and PP-AU, so I think it was pretty diverse. When it comes to the legal consideration, I have the Czech version of the text and can provide it to anyone if they ask. I'm not sure if we should publish this text though, since it hasn't been analyzed yet. We have not gotten any documentation about the technical solution yet either.
Exile: Regarding the question of working group on these statues. I was responsible for it. First, we had a strong interest but eventually there turned to be a lot of disagreements. Status group channel:
(https://mattermost.european-pirateparty.eu/ppeu-board/channels/working-group-on-second-chamber). There are also links to pad there to the channels. You can find all the answers there or ask me follow ups.
Matti Brandt: The second question was regarding the motion (that Mikuláš disccused) of changes of the statutes to attaint the EU status and the role of observer members in this issues. Where can we find the motion?
Mikuláš Peksa: I've sent a link to all the motions: https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=9th_council_meeting_2022:other_items. One of my motions would be to task the board to do something, and the other to postpone the process. Before we go for any statute changes or anything like that, we should have a clear signal from the council that we will go either this way, or another way. There have been hesitations on both of those, and I don't want to decide on my own, so I need some input on it. My idea was to condense all that into a single motion.
Sebastian Krone: Statutes can't be change this meeting?
Mikuláš Peksa: Exactly, we can't change it now. We have to elaborate it for the future and we can't resolve it in just one step. Should we proveed it with it you will receive material to that matter.
Thanasis Chantzios: As PP-GR, we have submitted the motion that doesn't regard the statutes. Is this going to be discussed today? It regards the protection of whistleblowers. (https://mattermost.european-pirateparty.eu/files/cwdehfwxetna5mmhjhoi4nbfdc/public?h=hK1jumcVorQAtU6VMVOKqIMzxHEreolivzahPavOklE)
Etienne: Regarding the reports, are there any questions? If not, I think we need a vote on the reports. We are proceeding to verifications of the proceedures.
Raman Ojha: Are we voting on if we agree with the reports? I am unsure about the nature of this vote.
Etienne: Yes. For example, you need to approve the treasury reports in order to give them a discharge for their mandates.
Dario Castane: In the past, we needed an approval just for the budget.
Motion (6):
Does the council approve the board report?
Motion (7):
Does the council approve the financial report?
Mikuláš Peksa (14:56): I am transferring the moderator´s right to Etienne as I need to shortly leave
Short break starting 14:58, Alessandro will take the chair from 15:05, resumed in 15:10
6. Voting on Motions
Motion For an asynchronous working platform (Etienne): This motion does not come out of nowhere. Several of us have spoken about the opportunity to have an asynchronous working platform (firstly one for discussion). We have Mattermost, but it's nost the most suitable one if you want to have more elaborate discussion or involve more people. If you want more details about the reasoning of this motion, I encourage you to read it, but the primary goal is to ask the board to establish a standard for an asynchronous working platform. How we want to communicate, share documents, etc. Maybe ask each party about a list of possible options and then choose from that list. The important part here is that we're all volunteers, and we might have some difficulties to all meet together. It could cause some frustrations not to be able to all participate in a meeting - the goal is to allow more people to participate. For example, in the second chamber, the debates were mostly online and it was difficult for some of us to be present. Maybe, with a discussion platform like a forum, it would've been easier to participate and reach an agreement on those changes. I would request for the motion to prepare and present an asynchronous working platform.
https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=9th_council_meeting_2022:other_items
Alessandro: We can ask our members to vote on it, if there are no questions.
Mikuláš Peksa: My understanding is what happens should it be approved: establishing a working group to work on the tool and then approve the move for the next council to approve it (decision on what platforms to deploy). What resources should be used for it. Should be on the existing server or a new server? Such a decision would limit the work of the working group. If we make the decision now it will simplify the work of the group.
Etienne: I'm not very familiar with specification and not a technician, but maybe what we can do, is for the first meeting to decide which resource we want to put on this new platform. It would be great if we could have more details on each solution. I think today, it would be difficult for the council to decide.
Mikuláš Peksa: I guess that's enough for now. There will be a proposal for the council. This would be the cheapest solution. There are also more expensive solutions. We should have them as a proposal to council and let it decide.
Etienne: It's a good idea.
Alessandro: No further questions, let's vote.
Voting on Motion (8):
Motion For an asynchronous working platform
Etienne (Motion For an annual calendar for Council Meeting): This second motion, is setting up a calendar for the Council Meeting. We have two Council meetings a year. We would like to ask a calendar of European PP Council for a full year. It will be more practical for organizing delegations and meetings. Out of our experience, when you have a calendar fixed with meeting in advance then more people show up. It is easier for them to anticipate it and it is more practical for the Council.
Sebastian Krone: From the practical view, we have very unsafe times with coronavirus around, it makes no sense to have such a long-term calendar. If we ever have to change, we have to discuss it with the council members, and we have to do it months in advance. I don't think that's practical. We have problems with discussion very often.
Etienne: For me, I hope we will have physical meetings again. Nevertheless, we will still have some online meetings ahead and hopefully we can fixed the meetings sooner. I think, it is not that complicated to switch between online and physical meetings. [Unintelligible]
Mikuláš Peksa: My understanding is that the Board does the call for the Council at the beginning of the year. I don't think we need to establish it, just the Board needs to be more proactive. It's become troublesome to call for council meetings - let's call for the Council at the beginning of the election year. It provides more security like this.
Etienne: The purpose is not to have a calendar for the whole year fixed. Stuff can happen. The goal is more to help our members to book the dates ahead of time and to be sure they'll be joining the meetings. Also, we can assure better to meet deadlines for nominations etc. (“Its a good motion”)
(You can read the motion at: https://wiki.ppeu.net/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=9th_council_meeting_2022:motion-for-anual-calendar-of-council-meeting.pdf)
Voting on motion 9.
Alessandro: The next motion is the [Motion for further direction of the registration process].
Mikuláš Peksa: I think the motion was explained prior. Basically, the Authority for Political Parties and Foundations expects us for all the member parties to be able to shape our policies. Their understanding is that such member should be able to vote on the motions. Now, the issue is that when we had this discussion last year, we thought that oberver membership status is enought but it doesn't seem to be the case. Now, should we offer a full membership to the applicates that don't have the name “Pirate”? We need 7 member with a representation on European, state, or local level. Currently, we have 3 and maybe fourth form Slovenia. If you look at it as it stays, now Pirate parties have a clear majority. Now, sneaking non-pirate parties into the Council would require a large amount of vote on the Council. Last but not least, we can always decide of who will be admitted to PPEU and who not. For example, I can't imagine the board admitting CDU-CSU. If such a party snuck among us, and the remaining Pirate parties lost their vote's power, we can have a system requiring a 2/3 majority to approve a statue change, and full 100% support for ideological changes such as those of objectives or principles of the organization (example with upload filters). With all that in mind, I think it's possible to admit a full member into this organization who is not bearing the Pirate name. Of course, you're all allowed to see it differently and not support this step - it's a big move.
Thanasis Chantzios: We have also proposed an amendment with regard to the first alternative. This keeps the sentence as is. We also propose to add an additional sentence: The proposal should at least require the party to have the PP logo in a visible mannger er along within the corresponding parties' logo, in any imminent European Parliament and/or National elections in order to restrict any further possibility for the party to act against the robustness of PPEU.
Matti Brandt: I've also got an ammendment that I'd like to add. I agree that we need to expand PPEU to accomodate more members that are similar to us. However, I'm not as comfortable with finding ourselves in a minority in the future. Thus, I've made an ammendment that would include changes to the delegate system etc., which would ensure we never find ourselves in the minority.
Alessandro: Do you want to include this ammendment?
Mikuláš Peksa: Regarding the proposal from Thansis I find it very reasonable. It is very likely that there will be a precondition for earning funding from the Authority based on showing the logo. It would thus useful to include the requirements in. We would thus have a legal tool [basis] to require it from our members. Last time we had a discussion about the logo, the decision was that we're not going to make it mandatory, but voluntary. I'd like this to be required, but I know pirates prefer to do things voluntarily. [We can do it voluntarily.] When it comes to the second ammendment, I'm definitely not opposing changes to the delegates system, but I don't see the intended political aim - what's supposed to happen with the delegate system, and it's a bit tricky for the board to propose those statute changes, it could be interpreted quite broadly.
Matti Brandt: I can provide a clarification. The change would assure that Pirate parties won't be a minority in the Council.
Mikuláš Peksa: How would it be done, from a technical standpoint? Other than saying “there are other Pirate parties where this works”.
Matti Brandt: As I said, I don't have any more clarification than what provided in the amendment proposal.
Alessandro: I'd suggest Mikuláš to provide a new version of the proposal, and in the meantime, we'll move forward to the next motion. When your motion is ready, we'll vote on that.
Mikuláš Peksa: I suggest to add Matti's option as the third one. I would suggest to include Thanasis option into both the options. Also, third alternative as postponing the motion.
Alessandro: If you want to proceed like this, we can have three alternatives that we'll vote on.
[ Platform does not support approval voting. ]
Thansis Chantzios: Due to the constraints of the platform, the best option is to move to the most generic option.
Veronika: I had a note on the system. The system allows for 3 questions following each other. Then, we can have questions one by one alternative X acceptable and then move to the next one and accepting the most popular.
Dario: Yes, we can do that. Then create 4th one with the passed options of the previous ones.
Bastian: Another way we can do it is to have three alternatives, and vote for 1 / 2, etc., but only with “yes” votes. Then, we take the favorite motion, and vote yes / no on it.
Voting on motion 10 - first stage.
Alternative 1a)
Council tasks Board to prepare proposal for change of the Statues for the next Council meeting. The proposal shall provide option to obtain membership including voting rights even to parties officially not bearing term “Pirate” in their name. However, the proposal should at least require such parties to bear the Pirate logo, in a visible manner along within the corresponding parties' logo, in any imminent European Parliament and/or National elections.
Alternative 1b)
Council tasks Board to prepare proposal for change of the Statues for the next Council meeting. The proposal shall provide option to obtain membership including voting rights even to parties officially not bearing term “Pirate” in their name, as well as changes to the delegate system and the allotment of the amount of delegates per member, to ensure that Pirate parties do not find themselves in a minority in the Council. However, the proposal should at least require such parties to bear the Pirate logo, in a visible manner along within the corresponding parties' logo, in any imminent European Parliament and/or National elections.
Alternative 2)
Council approves postponement of the registration process until mandatory parliamentary representaion of the PPEU members is reached.
Voting on motion 10 - second stage.
Veronika: PP-CZ asks to change their vote on motion 10, stage 2 to “Abstain”. That would change that part of the motion to “acceptable” as well.
Dario: A roll call vote is also a possibility. We saw that all three options are acceptable, maybe let's do a roll call vote.
Matti Brandt, Alessandro: I agree.
[ Roll call vote and a general discussion on interpretation of the results, as no option got more than 50%. ]
Matti: Proposal to suspend the meeting for today and resume tomorrow.
Exile: It is the board's job anyway to review statutes and look for problems and their solutions. I think we should not discuss that motion now as the board will look into it tomorrow.
Nikolaus Riss: We would like to propose a nomination for Nobel Peace Prize for Julian Assange.
Alessandro: Since we're very late, I suggest we approve proposal 1a and resume tomorrow. I suggest to move the remaining votings: on budget and PP-GR motion for tomorrow.
Thanasis: I agree.
Alessandro: If there are any objections, we'll have a vote. Otherwise, we're closing the meeting for today and resuming tomorrow.
[ 16:47: No objections, adjourned until tomorrow 10:30. ]
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-Motions-
1. Voting rights for non-paying parties, deferral of payments (lines 129-131):
For (68.75%): PP-CZ, PP-SE, PP-FR, PP-GR, MEPs
Against (12.5%): YPE
Abstain (18.75%): PP-DE, PP-CAT
Motion is approved.
2. Approval of the agenda (lines 135, 136):
https://wiki.ppeu.net/doku.php?id=9th_council_meeting_2022:agenda
For (100%): PP-FR, PP-CZ, YPE, MEPs, PP-SE, PP-GR, PP-CAT, PP-DE
Against (0%): -
Abstain (0%): -
Agenda is approved.
3. Reopening of the Board and CoCC nominations (lines 135, 136):
For (81.25%): PP-CZ, YPE, PP-GR, PP-FR, PP-SE, MEPs
Against (12.5%): PP-DE
Abstain (6.25%): PP-CAT
Motion is approved.
4. Does the Council approve the application of the MKKP into PPEU as an observer member? (lines 166, 167):
For (93.75%): PP-CZ, PP-GR, MEPs, PP-DE, PP-CAT, PP-SE, YPE
Against (6.25%): PP-FR
Abstain (0%): -
Motion is approved.
12:30 hrs Break until 13:30
5. Does the council approve of the appointment of the Pirate Party of Serbia as an observer member? (lines 186, 187):
For (100.0%): MEPs, PP-CZ, PP-SE, PP-GR, PP-CAT, PP-FR, YPE
Against (0%): -
Abstain (0%): -
(Germany not present)
Motion is approved.
6. Does the council approve of the board report? (lines 189-195)
For (100.0%): PP-FR, PP-CZ, YPE, MEPs, PP-SE, PP-GR, PP-CAT, PP-DE
Against (0%): -
Abstain (0%): -
Motion is approved.
7. Does the council approve of the financial report? (lines 197-210)
For (87.5%): PP-CZ, PP-GR, PP-CAT, PP-DE, MEPs, YPE
Against (6.25%): PP-FR
Abstain (6.25%): PP-SE
Motion is approved.
8. Motion for the development of an asynchronous working platform for further co-operation. (lines 231 - 237)
For (75%): PP-FR, PP-CZ, PP-GR, PP-SE, PP-CAT, MEPs
Against (12.5%): PP-DE
Abstain (12.5%): YPE
Motion is approved.
9. Motion for the creation of an annual calendar for Council Meetings (lines 243 - 248)
For (81.25%): PP-GR, PP-CZ, PP-SE, PP-FR, MEPs, YPE
Against (12.5%): PP-DE
Abstain (6.2%): PP-CAT
Motion is approved.
10. Motion for further direction of the registration process (lines 270-280)
Ammendments (voting on the reasonableness of each of the options):
1a) Voting rights and membership for parties not bearing the term pirate in their names, pirate logo required in national/EUP elections
For (68.75%): PP-CZ, PP-GR, PP-DE, YPE
Against (25%): MEPs, PP-SE, PP-FR
Abstain (6.25%): PP-CAT
Motion is acceptable.
1b) Allotment of delegate memberships to ensure pirate parties do not find themselves at a minority, pirate logo required in national/EUP elections
For (37.5%): PP-GR, PP-SE, MEPs, YPE
Against (6.25%): PP-FR
Abstain (56.25%): PP-DE, PP-CAT, PP-CZ
Motion is acceptable.
2) Council approves postponement of the registration process until mandatory parliamentary representation of the PPEU members is reached.
For (31.25%): PP-CAT, MEPs, PP-FR, PP-GR
Against (0%): -
Abstain (68.75%): YPE, PP-SE, PP-DE, PP-CZ
Motion is acceptable.
3) Motion for further direction of the registration process: final vote over alternatives
For 1a (43.75%): PP-CZ (3 votes), PP-DE (2 votes), PP-GR (1 vote), YPE (1 vote)
For 1b (25%): PP-CZ (2 votes), MEPs (1 vote), PP-SE (1 vote)
For 2 (25%): PP-CZ (1 vote), PP-FR (1 vote), PP-CAT (1 vote), YPE (1 vote)
Abstain (6.25%): PP-SL (1 vote)