With European Elections One Year Out, Pirate Representation Expected To Triple
This week, the end of May 2013, the European Elections are exactly one year out, and as things stand today, Pirate representation in the European Parliament can be expected to triple. This would follow a Swedish re-election, a German entry, and a Finnish entry following Peter Sunde’s candidacy. While the Pirate movement is still nascent, tripling representation would obviously advance the movement.
One year from the European Elections, we can take a quick look at the lay of the land, country by country for the Pirate Party.
In
Sweden, it is reasonable that the Pirate Party defends (at least) one seat of its current two. Seeing that Sweden has twenty seats in the European Parliament, you theoretically need 5% of the vote total per seat in Parliament. (Here, we can also observe that the Swedish Pirate Party’s two seats for 7.13% was a rounding error working heavily in the party’s favor – hence, with a repeated result of 7%, one seat can be expected. In fact, anywhere between 4% and 9% will probably yield one seat.)
In
Germany, the
Piratenpartei is currently polling at between 3% and 4%. It’s possible that this is enough to get to 5% on September 22 of this year, when Germany has its national election, which would be a huge boost to the movement. But even without such a success, 3%-4% is enough for four German seats in the European Parliament (out of Germany’s 99) in the elections in May 2014.
In
Finland, it has been announced that Peter Sunde is running for the European Parliament on a Pirate Party ticket, and his fame could quite probably carry his candidacy all the way.
So the Pirate representation in the European Parliament can be expected to triple in two ways – both in terms of countries represented (one to three) and in terms of Members of the European Parliament (two to six).
Additionally, seeing that there are Pirate Parties in 70 countries and counting, there are a number of dark horses that could break through between now and then, particularly among the Pirate Parties in Eastern Europe.
Onward to a brighter future!
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About The Author: Rick Falkvinge
Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky.
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