Common programme for European Pirate Parties – united in diversity
In Prague at the PPI conference Pirates signed a declaration about PPEU/Europe. In this post I would like to present how I would propose to continue the work for a common programme.
What doesn’t work
In my opinion every tentative to impose whatever piece of programme on national Pirate Parties will fail. Pirate Parties follow the grassroots principles and will not accept any decision imposed by top-down structures.
What also doesn’t work is trying to get every EU Pirate Party to agree on the exact same text and if one Party refuses to accept the position it wouldn’t be part of the common programme. At 27 (probably 28) member states (and hopefully Pirate Parties participating) finding unanimity on such detailled proposals will be impossible in the short time we have left until the 2014 elections. If you compare the current positions of Pirate Parties on copyright reform alone they range from “reduce to 10 years after death of author” (Pirate Party Germany) to “reduce to 14 years after publication” (Pirate Party Switzerland). Unanimity will lead to the situation where in the end we will not even be able to even decide on the title of the common programme1. This approach could also leed to conflicts between blocking/vetoing Pirate Parties and those that agree on a motion, leading to a fragementation of the movement rather then more cooperation.
Common, but not identical programme for EU Pirate Parties
My proposal on how to work on the common programme would be to harmonize national EU election programms to reflect our common vision of EU policy rather then aiming for identical programms. The final “common programme” wouldn’t be one document with a list of election claims identical to all Pirate Parties. If anything there should only be an identical preamble to all national EU programms, pointing out that Pirates are an international movement working together to resolve problems that transgress the confined borders of the individual member states.
How would this work in practise?
First the working group should identify topics common to Pirate Parties to determine what proposals could gather the most support.
Secondly the workgroup collects the current positions of Pirate Parties on the different topics identified in step one. They should focus only on topics where the EU actually has any competency and exclude country-specific topics.
Thirdly the workgroup fomulates motions that national parties can vote on – the work consists mostly in writing a concise description of the problem and possible solutions, taking into account already formulated proposals by national Pirate Parties.
F.ex. concerning copyright reform the workgroup should prepare a summary of the current problems of copyright legislation (as an explanation for the motion) and a list with concrete proposals to reform. These can be contradictory, f.ex. “reduce copyright term to 5 years after publication” or “reduce copyright term to day of the death of the author”.
Lastly the workgroup encourages Pirates from national Pirate Parties to submit their proposals for the EU programme following the rules of that national Party. Apart from the proposed preamble Parties can modify the proposals to their liking.
Before the elections: the workgroup collects the proposals accepted by national Parties and creates an overview of common topics and proposed solutions as well as a list of Pirate Parties that included the proposed preamble.
Continuous work: the preamble identical to all Pirate Parties’ EU programme needs a lot of “back and forth” between the working group and national parties to achieve a consensus.
(Dis)advantages
Advantages of this method:
- Flexibility. National Pirate Parties are not limited to accept or refuse a proposal by the workgroup but can adapt, modify and even refuse without them being excluded from the process. This will lead to a more coherent common policy while still ensuring pluralism.
- Shared ressources. It will be easier for Parties to include a topic into their programme that they don’t have included yet if they have multiple options instead of one single motion. This can help newly founded parties to create their EU programme even without having the ressources themselves to work out a position in detail. Also by not going for unanimity the work by the working group will never be in vain: even if not everyone agrees on one proposal it can still be used by other Parties in their programme.
- Grassroots priciples and participation. All decision-making is left to national Parties, without excluding them from the common programme even if they don’t agree with each and every proposal. This will lead to a higher acceptance of the process respecting grassroots principles and members’ participation.
- Pluralism. Non-EU Parties won’t be alienated from the movement – there wouldn’t be this one document claiming to represent the positions of the European Pirate movement. It would also be easier to include many Pirate Parties in the process – from eurosceptic parties to very euro-friendly Parties; with each Party being able to refuse certain motions and still be part of the common vision for the EU (e.g. by including the preamble in their national EU programme).
- Crowdsourcing. The work of the working groups would consist mostly of research and collecting information – tasks which can easily be crowdsourced. Instead of the need to have experts in every topic that write the “perfect” motion that can be accepted by over 20 Pirate Parties and their members, proposals only need to be checked for consistency (content and language).
- Publicity. By having a common preamble we show that Pirates are an international movement working closely together – this is especially important for EU elections. However we also underline that while working together we respect our basic principles of a grassroots movement and participation without top-down structures.
- Concreteness. Unanimity leads to generality – proposals would have to be formulated in very general terms for all Parties to agree. By using my method proposals can be very detailled and concrete, because multiple options are offered.
Disadvantages of this method:
- Contradiction. Some claims from different Pirate Parties might be contradictory – there will be few positions all Parties agree upon. This might make it more difficult to divulge the idea that we are one movement.
- Quality. The proposals might be less coherent compared to motions prepared by a small team of experts.
- Administration. The more people participate, collect different proposals, in different languages, the harder will be the administrative burden on the working group. Smaller groups are easier to manage, having multiple proposals could get confusing.
tl : dr
There shouldn’t be one document called “common programme of all EU Pirate Parties”. There should be 27 (28) national EU election programms with a preamble identical to all Parties, whose claims were harmonized before being voted on by national Pirates according to national procedure.
- cf. already discussions about the name ↩
I think your point about national Parties rejecting the work of PPEU is a very valid one. There is a risk. Given that it is the national Parties that will be presenting any common policy platform to electorates, it makes sense that the very structure and membership of PPEU is those same national Parties.
The closer the relationship between national Parties and the decision making body of the PPEU, the greater harmony and the lower the chance of rejection.
If the PPEU consists of delegates from national Parties, then the work of those delegates can be more closely linked to the views of national Parties, and the turn-around time of PPEU discussion being put to national Parties will be minimised.
This work would at this point not involve PPEU as a structure. That might come afterwards, but we cannot wait for PPEU to be founded to start working on it. Your points are valid nontheless
A delegate structure for PPEU will simply be unacceptable for the majority of German pirates in anything but a very short run.
They already accepted it with PPI. They accept it in Liquid Feedback too. I’m not saying we need only delegates or that I want them even
I’m just saying that that option has to be considered at least until we figure out how to get 750 Million European participate in a project. Don’t think most Pirates won’t understand that. 
Don’t be too sure about that. I’d be in favour of calling it ‘Pirate Parties Europe’ or something like that then, just to make sure.
‘Delegate’ is a dirty word for most German pirates.
Some measure of delegation is however necessary. If delegates are open and often changed, I see no problem.
Any vote choosing a chairman or secretary is a form of delegation.
I find Jerry’s positions and argumentation really excellent.
Alan Winkleman
Hannover
This is the way I hope PP-EU (as common coordination platform for european electiosn) will end.
Ay, I think too that Jerry is totaly right. Yesterday we had a meeting of Foreign dept. (Czech PP) and we agreed on the same ideas. Also we agreed that the PP-EU needs to be more organized. I fully understand why Germans may (or do) have a problem with the delegate form of PP-EU. On the other hand some sort of organization has to be there otherwise we risk (and there is a big chance of it) having a lot of people talking about everything, but agreeing on nothing. If Germans want to change the delegates often, its only their way. If some other PP wants to have the same delegate for a longer time, no problem. I think there should be no rules about this and its a matter of every single PP. On the other hand I think the number of delegates should be limited and votes (if there is any voting within the PP-EU – which should definitely sooner or later come) would be equal – one country = one vote, regardless of the number of delegates the country has.
I think PP-EU has to be organized and have a solid structure bacause in case we get to PP-EU, we have to be organized there too. Its always better to be prepared beforehand for what may come than to start solving things as they come.
Also I think that PP have quite a lot of common goals not only in the field of cenzorship, copyrights etc. We have to show the public all over the Europe that PPs are not a bunch of IT freaks and internet pirates, but well educated people understanding vast scale of problematics of the society and also caring about them. Sure there have to be a discussion, but it has to have a certain form and organization so we can achieve goals. From my profession I know that without goals, deadlines and organization its very hard to achieve anything even in a small group of people. And convincing the public in fair means (wihtout propaganda, silly slogans and milions thrown into campaign) is very hard thing to achieve. Cooperation on EU level will definitely strengthen the position of every national PP within EU. Still as was said before, it has to be an open-minded platform without any punishment for PPs that refuse or disagree any single agreement. People around EU are quite angry already about how EU forces countries to sign treaties and agreements they dont agree with (maybe its just UK and Czech republic, but I doubt that).
I think many people see that different parties are not able to cooperate on national level and they see the mess on the EU level which is from my point of view even bigger than on national levels. How can they agree on international level when they cant agree on the national one. We should show people that this is possible.
I shall be responsible for the PP-EU project in Czech republic. Now I start working on creating the PP-EU platform with the delegate form. I hope poeple from other PP-EU parties will cooperate so this is a common work from the start. So I would like other EU countries to appoint delegates to work on this with me. It doesnt mean other members from the national PPs wouldnt be able to participate, but it is necessary that they will participate through the delegates. Sure every EU PP will have an inside discussion with exact outcomes which will be discussed by the delegates. Its a way how national suverenity, discussion and the grassroot principle of every single PP in EU is preserved while maximising the effectivity of PP-EU. Also the group can start its work quite immediately as a very loose organization and get tighter in the future if needed and desired.
Let me know your thoughts and comments, please.