Europe’s political pirates have broken into two fleets as the anti-establishment movement tries to retain relevance 15 years after its anarchic beginnings.
One group has adopted some traditional party structures many in the movement long eschewed — and may finally become part of an EU coalition government.
The other has stuck to its anti-establishment sensibility, remaining loosely organized — and has mostly stayed on the outside looking in.
The divergence has left the political movement in a transitional phase nearly a generation after it first burst onto the scene, fueled by a growing wariness of mainstream politics and vowing to bring a tech-first, radically transparent ethos to politics.
While the broader movement has stagnated in many European countries — the success short-lived as parties struggled with infighting and conventional politics — some of the more developed parties are making gains. There are currently four pirate members in the European Parliament, as well as pirates in the national legislatures of Luxembourg, Iceland and the Czech Republic. A pirate is even serving as mayor of Prague.
And come October, the Czech pirate party may finally secure enough votes in the general election to enter the government’s ruling coalition. That would make them the first pirate party to be part of a national government within the EU — a major accomplishment. And it would put them in a rare league with other new age European protest parties, like the 5Stars movement in Italy, that actually vaulted into political power on pledges to use technology to bring people directly into government decision-making.
“It’s a new wind,” said Ivan Bartoš, head of the Czech Pirates, stressing the themes that have made the pirates popular for a small-but-vocal slice of Europeans: “No oligarch or big sponsors” and “completely transparent.”
Outsiders become insiders
Even as some pirate parties have grown increasingly willing to look like — and act like — a traditional political party, they insist they still represent a different approach.
Pirates first gained attention touting a tech-savviness, appealing to people who cared about issues like legalizing free digital copies of books and music. Some members helped create software that gave average people a direct say in what policies that pirate party pushed.
“What’s really special about our movement is that we understand technology, we understand how important digital rights are,” said German Pirate MEP Patrick Breyer. “We have quite a radical approach to transparency.”
Still, the pirates who have managed to carve out a role in national and European politics say there is also a need to be pragmatic and work across party lines.
“In hard times, cooperation always gives you better results than competition,” said Bartoš, the Czech leader.
Their political rivals, however, don’t necessarily see the pirates as pragmatic, saying their approach makes it difficult to tackle sensitive policy issues.
The pirates presented “something new” that “was sexy in the Czech political scene,” said MEP Tomáš Zdechovský, a member of the right-leaning Czech party KDU-ČSL. But, he added, “in many things, they are very naïve.”
One-hit wonders?
In the early years, the pirate movement gained adherents for the same reason it would soon stumble — it hated politics.
“None of us wanted to be politicians,” said Rick Falkvinge, who founded Europe’s first pirate party in Sweden in 2006.
Initially, he said, the party was narrowly focused on “copyrights, patents and privacy.”
Much of the party’s early momentum came from the debate around Pirate Bay, an illegal file-sharing service that Swedish police raided in mid-2006.
“We were just so frustrated with politicians not understanding something that was fundamental to our daily lives as the internet,” said Falkvinge, who is no longer directly involved with the party.
The Swedish pirates quickly inspired other pirate parties across Europe. The group took 7.1 percent of the popular vote in Sweden during the 2009 European Parliament election, a major leap for such a young party that trashed mainstream politics.
“It was something as simple as not being allowed to copy chapters of books during my studies,” said Mattias Bjärnemalm, a policy advisor for the Green group at the European Parliament, recalling his decision to join the Swedish Pirate Party shortly after its founding.
By 2011, the German Pirate Party took nearly 9 percent of the vote in a local Berlin election, entering the state parliament.
But the early electoral success in Germany was quickly quashed. Within the party, members say there was a shift in press coverage — from treating the movement as a colorful political curiosity to simply covering “gossip,” “arguments” and “unfortunate things people posted on Twitter,” said Breyer, the German MEP.
“At first, the German Pirate Party was hyped by the media,” he argued. “Afterwards, basically the opposite was the case.”
There were also accusations from outside the party that the German Pirates had taken on members with far-right views. Separately, a grizzly murder-suicide in 2016 involving a pirate politician took its toll.
Former German pirate politicians point to the party’s internal divisions and lack of organization.
“The party’s bodies even ignored their own decisions on how to run things, what to say,” said Martin Delius, an ex-pirate who is now a member of the left-wing Die Linke party.
It is not unusual, though, for a popular movement to gain swift traction as people rush to its insurgent message, and then falter as the movement rapidly grows unexpectedly.
“It was a very common trajectory,” said Bjärnemalm, the European Parliament adviser who is a member of the Swedish Pirates. “They have a first success, and then they implode because they didn’t know how to deal with that success. And a lot of the time, the members unify more on what they’re not than what they agree on.”
A second life
Despite the electoral disappointments in countries such as Sweden and Germany, the pirate party has lived on — and done well in some countries.
Parties that ultimately won seats in national parliaments grew “incrementally,” said Sven Clement, president of Luxembourg’s pirate party and a member of the country’s parliament.
“We can be dogmatic when it counts but are often open to negotiate the best and most pragmatic solution,” he said, pointing out that Luxembourg’s pirates have voted with both the government and the opposition, depending on the issue.
In Luxembourg, the pirates have emerged as one of the few alternatives in a political system that has traditionally strayed very little from the status quo.
Clement, one of two pirates in the Luxembourg parliament, has developed a reputation as a straight-talker willing to take on the government.
Other pirate parties that broadened beyond their founding policy issues — copyright and patent reform, digital rights — have also done well.
The Czech Pirates’ Bartoš said the movement’s ethos can be applied to all government decisions. Emphasizing data analysis, for instance, will help craft “good agricultural reform, or pension reform, which is needed,” Bartoš argued.
There’s also a growing realization in countries like Germany that pirates need a well-constructed ship. That means political staffers. It means parliamentary assistants.
“I think we are experiencing an increasing professionalization,” said the German Pirates’ Breyer, who like the other pirates in European Parliament sits with the Greens/European Free Alliance group.
Then there are other countries across Europe with smaller pirate parties where a strongly anti-establishment vibe and diffuse organizational approach persists.
In France, for instance, the pirate party’s raison d’être is to overhaul the entire system.
“Emmanuel Macron is the king of France,” said Florie Marie, a spokesperson for the French Pirate Party who also serves as vice chair of the board of the European Pirate Party.
“The French constitution and the French Republic — I want to change it all,” she said.
The result is that two types of pirate parties have emerged, said Clement, the president of Luxembourg’s pirate party.
There are the few “well-established” parties with burgeoning political infrastructure, Clement said. Then there are “all the other parties — and it’s very difficult sometimes to find the common ground, or the consensus between those two approaches,” he added.
Nevertheless, Clement emphasized that the two groups can work together.
“The parties that have success need to do more to help the parties that have less success,” he said, predicting smaller parties “will mature as well.”
A question of impact
If the Czech Pirate Party does become part of the country’s ruling coalition after the October election, it would be the first real test of whether the movement can turn its philosophy into concrete polities on the national level.
Pirate critics have long insisted the movement’s few elected politicians are ill-equipped for the realities of policymaking, especially on issues that naturally clash with calls for complete transparency.
“The naivety of these young IT guys — it’s really very huge,” said Czech MEP Zdechovský, adding, “we cannot be transparent” on issues like intelligence and the military.
“If the things are transparent too much, you are giving information — especially about the critical structure of the Czech Republic or of the European Union — to our enemies,” he said.
But current and former pirate party members insist the movement’s value goes beyond whether it can simply enter a ruling coalition.
“It’s the transnational aspect that has kept the movement alive,” said the Swedish Pirates’ Bjärnemalm. “It doesn’t matter if we have national setbacks, we’re still relevant, and our ideas are still being pushed somewhere.”
Cornelius Hirsch contributed data analysis.Vincent Manancourt contributed reporting.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
