During the weekend of the 16 and 17  March 2013 the Pirate Party of Croatia (PP-HR) hosted a European Pirate conference. This is part of a process started on  15 April  2012 during the Pirate Parties International (PPI) annual General Assembly. The goal is to have a common election program and to coordinate cooperation between the different national Pirate Parties and their MEPs. This joined ambition was formulated in the “Prague Declaration“.  Previous meetings where held in Potsdam (July), Barcelona (September), Rome (November), Manchester (December) and Paris (February). The next one will be held in Kiev in May. The  focus of the summit in Zagreb was the common election program. Over  a  dozen representatives from different European countries worked  together  to  prepare the European elections of 2014.

Saturday

The meeting began with preparation of a press conference. After the press conference and lunch work began on the election programme. Work was continued where the Paris conference ended.

Sunday

On the second day began with a short presentation. One of the members of PP-HR made a nice logo that could be used to identify PPEU in the future. No decision on the use of this or any other logo was taken during the meeting. Next presentation focused on an e-democracy platform currently developed by several members of PP-HR. After that work continued where it left of the day before.

A new topic was spontaneously added to the agenda

Croatia will join the European Union on  1 July 2013 and needs to be represented in the European parliament from that moment onwards. To appoint these representatives there will be elections held in Croatia on 14 April. Candidates elected at this time will only serve for the remainder of the 2009-2014 term. In 2014 there will be EU elections in all EU counties.

The PP-HR is a recently founded party, officially registered less than one year ago on 6 April 2012. It will be the first time they compete in an election. However, they have already been mentioned in one poll. This poll gives the party a whooping 6.4%. So chances are real that out of the 12 representatives elected to represent Croatia, one will be a Pirate. Since there is only a short time left before the elections (only short notice was given), the inexperienced Party will need help to match the poll results. On behalf of the Croatian Pirates I would like to ask all of our readers who can to lend a hand. Pirates are after all a transnational movement.

Featured image:  PP-HR CC-BY-SA

About Koen De Voegt

I’m a 34 year old electronics engineer from Antwerp, Belgium. I joined the Belgian Pirate Party in October of 2011. Around that time I was one of the first members of the Ghent branch. In January 2012 I founded the local branch of the PP in the city and province of Antwerp. I’m also travelling to international PP meetings, sometimes as delegate. I find the international nature of the pirate movement one of its great strengths to focus more on this I’ve successfully ran for co-chairperson of PPI.

 

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During the weekend of the 16 and 17  March 2013 the Pirate Party of Croatia (PP-HR) hosted a European Pirate conference. This is part of a process started on  15 April…