Dear fellow pirates,
Below you can find the proposals for the common programme that our programme working group has prepared. Since we haven't had any time to hold a discussion of the proposals among the party bases, we do not know if all the proposals will be in the end supported by our members during the ratification process (similarly as PP-DE). Although we hope they will be.
We have a few self-standing proposals that we think might be interesting to include in the common programme and then some specific comments regarding the PP-DE draft (changes, additions and/or further clarification/discussion needed). When not in the Manifesto, the corresponding section of the PPDE draft has been specified.
Regarding proposals departing from the core values, we think it might be interesting to put them forward anyway because, even if they end up being unacceptable in the Common Programme for some parties, if we see that they are shared by a sufficiently large number of parties, we could add another small section in our programmes of things shared by a number of parties (an Onion Programme… ).
Best regards,
Muriel Rovira Esteva International Coordinator Pirates de Catalunya
Martina, I hope it is clear that we assumed the German proposal as a draft and what we list in here are additional proposals to that.
By the way, you can remove the link in proposal 13, we forgot to remove it and its not in English. :P
Thanks!
Muriel
PROPOSAL 1: Removal of unjustified barriers [Citizen participation and Open Government]
We PIRATES want a larger and more direct participation of the citizens in the policy debate and decision making process, both individually and collectively. We therefore demand the removal of unjustified barriers to the participation of new political parties that exist in some EU Member States, such as the requirement of collecting a certain number of signatures in order to stand for election.
PROPOSAL 2: Condemn and eradicate the apology of movements against Human Rights [Civil Rights]
We, the European Pirates, are against movements who don't respect Human Rights. We condemn any movement fueled by xenophobic, fascist or discriminatory ideas against any collective.
PROPOSAL 3: Ensure the possibility to all European citizens to vote and stand Europe-wide as candidates in all elections at any level (local, regional, national, European, etc.). [Civil Rights]
We, the European Pirates, aim to reduce the democratic deficit by granting all mobile Europeans the right to vote not only in local and European elections, but also in regional and national elections in the State where they live.
PROPOSAL 4: Financial transaction tax [PP-DE: Economic and Financial Policy]
We support the establishment of taxes to international financial transactions, one of the causes of international financial instability, which generate huge amounts of speculative profits with little or no contribution to public budgets.
PROPOSAL 5: Eradicate tax havens [PP-DE: Economic and Financial Policy]
We request the EC and other relevant international organisations to take action against tax havens, which mainly harbour fortunes of illegal, criminal and dubious origin.
PROPOSAL 6: Public, free, secular and universal education [Civil Rights]
We, the European Pirates, want to ensure that every European citizen has a proper education, based on Human Rights, far from ideological and partisan fights, and aimed at ensuring critical thinking, tolerance, cooperation, culture and tools for a proper personal development.
PROPOSAL 7: Limit the salaries of top executives to N times higher than the lowest company's salary [PP-DE: Economic and Financial Policy]
The rise in income inequalities between the richest and the poorest segments of society is a cause of social fracture and is not justified by any convincing incentive justification. We support a policy debate in the EU to discuss an acceptable range of income inequality (e.g. 1:12) and the ways to implement it.
PROPOSAL 8: Mandatory use of free software in public administration [Free software and Libre Culture]
We, European Pirates, think citizens' data must be processed, managed and secured with free software tools. Free software reduces administrative costs and promotes local technical support.
PROPOSAL 9: Ban disproportionate and indiscriminate police's use of weapons in demonstrations and protests. Stop rubber bullets. [Civil Rights]
We, the European Pirates, are against police's use in riot control of “kinetic impact munitions” known to cause bone fractures, injuries to internal organs, or death. We demand an unified and progressive normative for riot control, to force police to use truly non-lethal weapons and other techniques, converging to the most advanced legislation among different member countries.
PROPOSAL 10: Ban indiscriminate personal identifications in public spaces [Civil Rights]
We, the European Pirates, are against the identification of citizens during demonstrations if they aren't commiting a crime. If anyone can be targeted in any demonstration or political development, manifesting your opinion becomes a danger.
PROPOSAL 11: Unify the police's normative towards a more progressive one [Civil Rights]
We, the European Pirates, want to improve police's normative to a common ground, based on the most progressive normative from different member countries and focused in proper identification and avoiding abuse of power. Abuse must be punished with demotion and dismissal from office and lost all benefits (except pension) and the permanent inability to hold any public office.
PROPOSAL 12: Ban immigration detention centers [Civil Rights]
The human rights of people who are in immigration detention are of particular concern to the European Pirates. Liberty is a fundamental human right, recognised in major human rights instruments to which Europe is a party, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. People who are held in detention are particularly vulnerable to violations of their human rights.
PROPOSAL 13: Better citizen direct participation [Citizen participation and Open Government]
We, the European Pirates, want a common normative for Citizen Initiatives at local, regional, national and European levels. We want initiatives that can modify constitutions, laws, etc. always bound by referendum.
PROPOSAL 14: Economy to serve the people [PP-DE: Economic and Financial Policy]
We challenge the prevailing ideology that identifies wellbeing and social development with increased production and consumption of material goods, a model that cannot by any means be extended to the whole world population of the world and threatens the environmental sustainability of the planet. We support a social debate for the search and development of alternative options - economy of the common good, decreasing growth proposals, etc. - which challenge the rationality and feasibility of the present ultra-productivistic model.
PROPOSAL 15: Preserve the Welfare State [PP-DE: Economic and Financial Policy]
The Welfare State is one of the key contributions of the EU to our world. It is founded on an implicit social contract which expects that the well-off are willing to contribute to the overall social expenditure with a larger proportion of their income than those with low incomes. This social contract is being abandoned by the most affluent, with the support of governments, which back their efforts to avoid making a fair contribution to the public budget (SICAVs, tax havens, regressive taxes, etc). We PIRATES want this trend to be reversed.
COMMENTS TO THE PPDE DRAFT
A) Add PP-CZ points to PP-DE programme.
B) Marshall-Plan
We urge you to use another expression instead of Marshall Plan, because it wasn't an economic plan based on solidarity. It was a strategic plan from USA to get privileges over weak countries. It doesn't fit the spirit of the proposal.
C) Energy Policy
We recommend to give more importance to the decentralized integration of the energy market, because it avoids monopolies and it doesn't need subsidies (it would be impossible to subsidize every equipment on the network), and less on the green side of supporting some environmentalist issues, because they can be more polemic and make this block rejected (not because we can't be greenish, just because we have a lot of different kind of green pirates).
D) Ensuring everyone's privacy - It is not only important that they should be at least suspected of preparing a crime, but it should be guaranteed that this decision is authorised by a judge. So we would like to add:
“… preparing a crime, and is allowed and supervised by the judiciary power.”
E) Cooling-off period for top politicians - We think it's important to state a number of years because indeed many countries have laws regarding this point but the periods are so brief that they are useless:
“… “cooling-off”) of a mínimum duration of five (5) years”
F) Transparency of Public Procurement (additional points proposed for the PPDE draft)
* Transparency should be active and on demand.
* No justification should be provided for requesting a certain information.
* It should apply to government, public administration, political parties, and private organisations which are owned (>30% share) by the public sector or receive more tan 30% of their income from public budgets.
* Financial and banking institutions should also be subject to transparency requirements, as the experience has shown that they ultimately rely on public (taxpayers’s) money, as they “cannot be allowed to fail”.
* Transparency requirements should also include private entities that carry out by delegation a public role.
* Transparency laws should have the highest legal rank.
* Administrative silence should not be legally accepted as a normal answer to an information request.
* The exceptions to transparency should be clearly and operationally listed in the transparency law.
G) Legal Guarantee for Anonymous, Pseudonymous and Autonymous Access to Network Services (further discussion/clarification necessary)
Do you want to rule out the possibility that a private internet group requires participants to disclose their name/identity? May need some additional clarification if this is not the case and, if it is the case, then we forsee that it might be polemic among our bases/not ratified in the end, so we would recommend removing it.
H) Degradation of Private Monopolies and Opening Markets (additional points proposed for the PPDE draft)
* The EU and other industrialised countries should not force (e.g. at the occasion of the negotiation of trade agreements) less developed countries to accept IP provisions that are likely to be detrimental to the essential needs of health, education and development opportunities. They should not bully countries either that lawfully use the safeguards of existing agreements for public health or any other objectives (e.g. compulsory licenses of medicines).
* We oppose the frequent abuses of patent privileges, such as evergreening practices (introducing spurious changes to medicines with expiring patent protection), paying for delay (to pay a compensation to a generic producer in order to delay the marketing of a potential generic competitor, the consequent reduction in the price of the medicine).
* We support the establishmet and funding of alternatives to monopolistic incentives to pharmaceutical innovation (patents, test data protection), such as those that delink the reward of the innovation from the price of the product (prizes, health innovation funds, patent pools, international treaty for biomedical research, etc)
I) Agricultural Subsidies (further discussion necessary)
Potential conflicts of removing all subsidies with policies to support local food production and consumption should be explored.
We have doubts about this point being related with our core vaules and we forsee that it might be quite polemical among our bases, so we would recommend removing it or, if it is related to core pirate values, clarify better in which way.
J) European Economic and Monetary Union (additional points proposed for the PPDE draft)
We believe that the tradicional role of the banking and financial system was and should be to support the smoth working of the real productive (and consumptive) economy. However, the financial sector has at present become something closer to a global casino as its main objective is to carry out speculative activities with a short term benefit that have become one of the main causes of the global financial instability and of the present economic crisis. We therefore want the financial sector to be much more transparent and well regulated to serve the needs of the economic system and society at large.
K) Taking Into Account the Interests of Small and Medium-Sized Companies (proposal to add the following introductory statement to this section of the PPDE draft)
The EU should be more active in enforcing anti-monopoly and pro-competition policies.