Pirate Parties International

Pirate Parties International

Abbreviation	PPI
Formation	18 April 2010 (2010-04-18)
Type	International nongovernmental organisation
Legal status	Association
Purpose	Political
Headquarters	Brussels, Belgium
Membership	Pirate parties and affiliated associations
Chairperson	Bailey Lamon
Vice-Chairperson	Gregory Engels
General Secretary
Treasurer
Main organ	General Assembly
Website	www.pp-international.net

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Pirate Parties International (PPI) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.^[1] Formed in 2010, it serves as a worldwide organization for Pirate Parties, currently representing 39 members from 36 countries across Europe, Americas, Asia, Africa and Australasia. The Pirate Parties are political incarnations of the freedom of expression movement, trying to achieve their goals by the means of the established political system rather than just through activism. In 2017 PPI had been granted special consultative status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.^[2]

Aims[]

The PPI statutes^[3] give its purposes as:

to help establish, to support and promote, and to maintain communication and co-operation between pirate parties around the world.

The PPI advocate on the international level for the promotion of the goals its Members share such as protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the digital age, consumer and authors rights-oriented reform of copyright and related rights, support of information privacy, transparency, and free access to information.

The name "Pirates" itself is a reappropriation of the title that was given to internet users by the representatives of the music and film industry and does not refer to any illegal activity.

History[]

The first Pirate Party was the Swedish Piratpartiet, founded on 1 January 2006. Other parties and groups were formed in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. In 2007, representatives of these parties met in Vienna, Austria to form an alliance and plan for the 2009 European Parliament elections.^[4] Further conferences were held in 2008 in Berlin and Uppsala, the latter leading to the "Uppsala Declaration" of a basic platform for the elections.^[5]

In 2009, the original Pirate Party won 7.1% of the vote^[6] in Sweden's European Parliament elections and won two of Sweden's twenty MEP seats, inspired by a surge in membership following the trial and conviction of three members of the ideologically aligned Pirate Bay a year earlier.^[7]

On 18 April 2010, the Pirate Parties International was formally founded in Brussels at the PPI Conference from April 16 to 18.^[1]

Uppsala Declaration[]

At the 2009 conference of Pirate Parties International in Uppsala (Sweden), European Pirate parties agreed on a common declaration of the parties' goals for the upcoming election of the European Parliament.^[8][9] Central issues of the declaration are:

• reform of copyright, exemption of non-commercial activity from copyright regulation, reduction of the duration of copyright protections; banning of DRM technologies, opposition to media or hardware levies;
• reform of patent law, particularly stating that patents on life (including patents on seeds and genes) and software should not be allowed;
• strengthening civil rights, transparent government, speedy and fair trial, freedom of speech, and expansion of the right to anonymity in communication.

Prague Declaration[]

At the conference of Pirate Parties International in Prague (Czech Republic) in 2012, European Pirate parties agreed to run in the elections to the European Parliament in the year 2014 with a common program as well as establish a European political party (European Pirate Party, PPEU). The declaration^[10] has been followed by conferences in Potsdam and Barcelona to work on the structure of the legal body to come and the statutes for it.

Member Parties[]

As of 1 January 2021, PPI has the following 40^[11] ordinary members with the voting power of 37 (parties sharing territory split the vote among themselves):

1. Pirate Party of Austria
2. The Pirates Center of Belarus
3. Pirate Party of Belgium
4. Pirate Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
5. Pirate Party of Brazil
6. Pirate Party of Bulgaria
7. Pirate Party of Catalonia (1/2 vote; vote shared with Spain)
8. Pirate Party of Chile
9. Czech Pirate Party
10. Estonian Pirate Party
11. Pirate Party of France
12. Pirate Party Germany
13. Pirate Party of Greece
14. Pirate Party of Hungary
15. Pirate Party of Israel
16. Italian Pirate Party
17. 
18. Pirate Party of Kazakhstan
19. 
20. Pirate Party of Latvia
21. Pirate Party Luxembourg
22. Pirate Party of Morocco
23. Pirate Party of Netherlands
24. Pirate Party of New Zealand (1/2 vote; vote shared with IP New Zealand)
25. Internet Party New Zealand (1/2 vote; vote shared with PP New Zealand)
26. Pirate Party of Norway
27. Polish Pirate Party
28. 
29. Pirate Party Romania
30. Pirate Party of Russia
31. Pirate Party of Spain (1/2 vote; vote shared with Catalonia)
32. Pirate Party of Slovakia (1/2 vote; vote shared with the other Slovakia)
33. (1/2 vote; vote shared with the other Slovakia)
34. Pirate Party of Slovenia
35. Pirate Party Switzerland
36. Pirate Party of Tunisia
37. Pirate Party of Turkey (1/2 vote; vote shared with the other Turkey)
38. Pirate Party Turkey (1/2 vote; vote shared with the other Turkey)
39. Ukrainian Pirate Community
40. 

Resignations[]

In February 2015, Pirate Party Australia resigned from PPI due to serious disagreement with the direction and management of the organization.^[12] In the same month, Pirate Party UK also resigned^[13] and in March the Belgian Pirate Party suspended its membership within PPI.^[14]

On 20 April 2015, the Pirate Party of Iceland voted overwhelmingly to leave PPI.^[15] A member of the executive, Arnaldur Sigurðarson, reported a 96.56% vote in favor of leaving, adding: “PPI has been pretty much useless when it comes to its objectives which should be to encourage international cooperation between Pirate Parties.”

In May 2015, the Pirate Party of Sweden resolved with a significant majority to leave PPI, canceling their observer status.^[16]

In July 2016, the Pirate Party of Canada officially withdrew from Pirate Parties International citing ongoing troubles with the organization as well as a failure to adequately provide any accomplishments over its history.

Structure[]

The PPI is governed by a board, formerly led by two co-chairs,^[17] and since the Warsaw conference of 2015 by a chair and a vice-chair. Policy, governance, and applications for membership are the responsibility of the PPI General Assembly which must convene at least once per year.^[18] By the current rules, board members are elected for a two-year term, half of the board being elected every year. Since the 2019 General Assembly, the Board has 9 members (previously 7). General Secretary and Treasurer positions are filled by the board by its members.

PPI Board

No.	Term	Co-Chairs (chair & vice-chair from 2015 onwards)	General Secretary	Treasurer	Member of the board	Alternates
1st Board	IV/2010 III/2011	Grégory Engels, Jerry Weyer	Joachim Mönch	Nicolas Sahlqvist	Aleksandar Blagojevic, , Bogomil Shopov	–
2nd Board	III/2011 IV/2012	Samir Allioui, Marcel Kolaja (receded)	Lola Voronina		Finlay Archibald (receded), (receded), Thomas Gaul	–
3rd Board	IV/2012 IV/2013	Grégory Engels, Lola Voronina	Travis McCrea	Ed Geraghty	, Jelena Jovanović, Denis Simonet	Brendan Molloy, Thomas Gaul, Alessandra Minoni, Andrew Norton (receded)
4th Board	IV/2013 IV/2014	Grégory Engels,	Thomas Gaul	Marc Tholl	Nuno Cardoso, Azat Gabrakhmanov, Denis Simonet	Jelena Jovanović, , Radosław Pietroń, Yasin Aydın
5th Board	IV/2014 VII/2015	,	Thomas Gaul	Sebastian Krone	Grégory Engels, Anders Kleppe,	Marco Confalonieri, Yasin Aydın, Min Chiaki, Chemseddine Ben Jemaa
6th Board	VII/2015 VII/2016	(chair) (vice-chair)	Henrique Peer	Karla Medrano	Min Chiaki, Chemseddine Ben Jemaa, Dr. Richard Hill,	Anders Kleppe, Nikolay Voronov, Koen De Voegt, Grégory Engels
7th Board	VII/2016 XI/2017	(chair) Bailey Lamon (vice-chair)	Thomas Gaul	Keith L. Goldstein	Andrew Reitemeyer, Raymond Johansen, Koen De Voegt	Nikolay Voronov, Patrick Schiffer, Adam Wolf, Grégory Engels
8th Board	XI/2017 XI/2018	Guillaume Saouli (chair) Bailey Lamon (vice-chair)	Keith L. Goldstein	Thomas Gaul	Koen De Voegt, Raymond Johansen, Nikolay Voronov	Adam Wolf, Etienne Evellin, Daniel Dantas Prazeres, Grégory Engels
9th Board	XI/2018 XII/2019	Guillaume Saouli (chair) Bailey Lamon (vice-chair)	Keith L. Goldstein		Etienne Evellin, Raymond Johansen, Ladislav Koubek	Daniel Dantas Prazeres, Grégory Engels, Kitty Hundal, Cédric Levieux
10th Board	XII/2019 XII/2020	Bailey Lamon (chair) Grégory Engels (vice-chair)	Keith L. Goldstein	Daniel Dantas Prazeres	Cédric Levieux, Thomas Gaul, Michal Gill, Linda B. Tørklep, Giuseppe Calandra	Sebastian Krone, Carlos Polo, Svein Mork Dahl, Cristina Diana Bargu[19]
11th Board	since XII/2020	Bailey Lamon (chair) Grégory Engels (vice-chair)	Michal Gill	Sebastian Krone	Keith L. Goldstein, Carlos Polo, Manuel Caicedo, Dario Castane, Daniel Dantas Prazeres	Svein Mork Dahl, Thomas Gaul, Ji Yong Dijkhuis

All board meetings are recorded and the minutes are published here: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board/Board_Meetings.

PPI Conferences[]

All conferences are recorded and the minutes are published here: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_General_Assembly.

Pirate Party movement worldwide[]

See Pirate Party and List of Pirate Parties for an overview of all Pirate Parties around the world.

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pirate Parties International.

• Official website
  • Wiki
• Pirate Parties International Collection at the Internet Archive