Report on the Manchester PP-EU statues group conference
Δημοσιεύτηκε: 08 Δεκ 2012, 17:05
Report on the Manchester PP-EU statues group conference from Gregory Engels.
I have participated in the PP-EU Manchester conference as an official delegate from PP-GR and PP-RU. I also had consultations with PP-UA and PP-KZ who have transferred their delegations to Bastian Krone who has represented them during the conference.
The processing of the conference can be read in the conference minutes at http://eu.piratenpad.de/Manchester-2012
Decisions and major discussion points:
In the process of the conference only few decisions have been made, and the debates showed once more the different expectations from the participating pirate parties in the future Pirate Party of Europe. While some see it mainly as a vehicle to get access to the monetary subsidization by the European Union, others see a chance to build a trans-national political entity that has the scope to address the trans-national political challenges on the european level. This two groups of Pirate Parties can also be roughly distinguished by the level of pro-european support in their respective home countries.
the first two hours of the conference was spent discussing the Rules of Procedure, this can be partly be attributed to the unpreparedness of the meeting chair, and to the other part to the motion of some Parties (PP-DE, PP-CH) to limit the number of votes to one per country, rather then one per Pirate Party (In Barcelona, the Pirate Parties of Catalonia, Galicia and Spain each had one vote - in this conference only Catalonian Pirates were present, but the german pirates from Bremen, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia had each a delegation mandate in their poked, potentially requesting a vote for their own.), This led to a lengthy discussion but was approved in the end.
One major point of dissent arose around the question if the future PP-EU organization should include a conflict resolution body (e.g. Court of Arbitration or Mediation Committee) that would bound the Members to consult first in order to resolve conflicts, rather then to sue each other at regular courts. This point proved difficult due to different reasons - some have voiced the fear of loosing some sovereignty, others had no trust and no experience in such a construct due to the lack of it in some juridical systems.
That fact, that the future PP-EU would have an CoA proved for PP-UK delegation a "red line" as they said, as they have requested to retable this agenda item some hours after it was passed. This motion was rejected by a vast majority of participating delegations and subsequently PP-UK announced it withdrawal from the foundation process of PP-EU.
There have been a lot of motions aimed so to seem to slow down the process - like the motion of PP-CZ to retable a number of decisions made in Barcelona and to exclude the non-eu parties from joining the PP-EU. This led to heated allegation from some delegations (PP-NL, PP-CZ) toward the legitimacy of some delegations and the democratic nature of some Pirate Parties. In the same time an discussion by anonymous users was led in pad accusing the "Germans" to dominate the process, or questioning the validity of the PP-GR board decision on delegation. This led to an quite unfriendly atmosphere. In the end the PP-CZ Motion was defeated.
On day two PP-SE has proposed a "piggy back approach" by creating a technical joint of pirate parties and EUDemocrats just for the task of getting money of EU. The plan would be to ditch that joint organization as soon as pirates would fulfill the criteria on their own. This suggestion will be discussed offline.
It was agreed on the next series of events: PP-EU Program group would meet in January in Hannover and later in March in Zagreb. The Statutes Group would met in February in Paris and in May in Kiev.
Organization:
The Meeting have started one hour behind the schedule, at 12:00noon. (Originally it was planned to start at 10am, but this time was moved back one hour one day before the conference) The Organizers have not prepared any agenda or RoP, so that one member of PP-DE (Martina) has prepared an agenda and RoP proposal on her own - for the next time a team of three people was named to prepare an agenda and the RoP were changed to continue to next meeting, so it could be expected that the next meetings will be more productive. The Conference venue was suitable, the internet connection has worked without failing. The evening socializing session was good, but the room could be a little less noisy.
Conclusion: The pp-eu foundation process is a long one. In the process the different expectations and experiences emerges only slowly and become eminent mainly in the side conversations that are not streamed and so in-transparent for stream-only participants. I would recommend every party that cannot afford to send in a physical delegate to work in advance with some regular conference participants who could represent them in person in the conference as in addition to participating in the stream with remote delegates.
sincerely yours,
Gregory Engels
Co-Chairman
Pirate Parties International
I have participated in the PP-EU Manchester conference as an official delegate from PP-GR and PP-RU. I also had consultations with PP-UA and PP-KZ who have transferred their delegations to Bastian Krone who has represented them during the conference.
The processing of the conference can be read in the conference minutes at http://eu.piratenpad.de/Manchester-2012
Decisions and major discussion points:
In the process of the conference only few decisions have been made, and the debates showed once more the different expectations from the participating pirate parties in the future Pirate Party of Europe. While some see it mainly as a vehicle to get access to the monetary subsidization by the European Union, others see a chance to build a trans-national political entity that has the scope to address the trans-national political challenges on the european level. This two groups of Pirate Parties can also be roughly distinguished by the level of pro-european support in their respective home countries.
the first two hours of the conference was spent discussing the Rules of Procedure, this can be partly be attributed to the unpreparedness of the meeting chair, and to the other part to the motion of some Parties (PP-DE, PP-CH) to limit the number of votes to one per country, rather then one per Pirate Party (In Barcelona, the Pirate Parties of Catalonia, Galicia and Spain each had one vote - in this conference only Catalonian Pirates were present, but the german pirates from Bremen, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia had each a delegation mandate in their poked, potentially requesting a vote for their own.), This led to a lengthy discussion but was approved in the end.
One major point of dissent arose around the question if the future PP-EU organization should include a conflict resolution body (e.g. Court of Arbitration or Mediation Committee) that would bound the Members to consult first in order to resolve conflicts, rather then to sue each other at regular courts. This point proved difficult due to different reasons - some have voiced the fear of loosing some sovereignty, others had no trust and no experience in such a construct due to the lack of it in some juridical systems.
That fact, that the future PP-EU would have an CoA proved for PP-UK delegation a "red line" as they said, as they have requested to retable this agenda item some hours after it was passed. This motion was rejected by a vast majority of participating delegations and subsequently PP-UK announced it withdrawal from the foundation process of PP-EU.
There have been a lot of motions aimed so to seem to slow down the process - like the motion of PP-CZ to retable a number of decisions made in Barcelona and to exclude the non-eu parties from joining the PP-EU. This led to heated allegation from some delegations (PP-NL, PP-CZ) toward the legitimacy of some delegations and the democratic nature of some Pirate Parties. In the same time an discussion by anonymous users was led in pad accusing the "Germans" to dominate the process, or questioning the validity of the PP-GR board decision on delegation. This led to an quite unfriendly atmosphere. In the end the PP-CZ Motion was defeated.
On day two PP-SE has proposed a "piggy back approach" by creating a technical joint of pirate parties and EUDemocrats just for the task of getting money of EU. The plan would be to ditch that joint organization as soon as pirates would fulfill the criteria on their own. This suggestion will be discussed offline.
It was agreed on the next series of events: PP-EU Program group would meet in January in Hannover and later in March in Zagreb. The Statutes Group would met in February in Paris and in May in Kiev.
Organization:
The Meeting have started one hour behind the schedule, at 12:00noon. (Originally it was planned to start at 10am, but this time was moved back one hour one day before the conference) The Organizers have not prepared any agenda or RoP, so that one member of PP-DE (Martina) has prepared an agenda and RoP proposal on her own - for the next time a team of three people was named to prepare an agenda and the RoP were changed to continue to next meeting, so it could be expected that the next meetings will be more productive. The Conference venue was suitable, the internet connection has worked without failing. The evening socializing session was good, but the room could be a little less noisy.
Conclusion: The pp-eu foundation process is a long one. In the process the different expectations and experiences emerges only slowly and become eminent mainly in the side conversations that are not streamed and so in-transparent for stream-only participants. I would recommend every party that cannot afford to send in a physical delegate to work in advance with some regular conference participants who could represent them in person in the conference as in addition to participating in the stream with remote delegates.
sincerely yours,
Gregory Engels
Co-Chairman
Pirate Parties International