| Pirate Party Germany Piratenpartei Deutschland |
|
|---|---|
| Leader | Sebastian Nerz |
| Founded | 10 September 2006 |
| Headquarters | Berlin |
| Youth wing | Junge Piraten |
| Membership | > 18,000 |
| Ideology | Freedom of Information, privacy, copyright and patent reform, transparency of government, education, Civil libertarianism, Social liberalism |
| International affiliation | Pirate Parties International |
| Official colours | Orange/Black |
| Seats in the Bundestag |
0 / 622
|
| Seats in the Regional Parliaments |
15 / 1,859
|
| Seats in the European Parliament |
0 / 99
|
| Website | |
| piratenpartei.de | |
| Politics of Germany Political parties Elections |
|
The Pirate Party Germany (German: Piratenpartei Deutschland; short: PIRATEN, "Pirates") is a political party in Germany based on the model of the Swedish Piratpartiet.[1][2]
Contents |
The party supports the preservation of current civil rights in telephony and on the Internet; in particular, it opposes the European data retention policies.
The party favors the civil right to information privacy and reforms of copyright, education, and genetic patents.
It promotes in particular an enhanced transparency of government by implementing open source governance and providing for APIs to allow for electronic inspection and monitoring of government operations by the citizen.[3]
The party was founded on 10 September 2006. The party leader has been Sebastian Nerz since 14 May 2011.[4] Previous leaders were Dirk Hillbrecht, Christof Leng, and Jens Seipenbusch.
In February 2009, the village spokesperson of Hohenstein and as such city councillor in Strausberg Jens Knoblich joined the Pirate Party Germany.[5][6] In June 2009, Bundestag member Jörg Tauss left the SPD and joined the Pirate Party[7] after the Zugangserschwerungsgesetz was passed, but left the Pirate Party in 2010 when he was convicted for possession of child pornography.[8] In late August 2009, Herbert Rusche, one of the founding members of the German Green Party and, in the 1980s, the first openly homosexual member of parliament in Germany, joined the Pirate Party.[9][10]
The PIRATEN with 8.9% of the votes won 15 seats in the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin.
On 27 September 2009, the PIRATEN received 2.0% (845,904 votes) in the 2009 German federal election. This result means that the party failed to secure any seat in the Bundestag, however this was also the best result among the parties who didn't achieve the required 5% threshold. Among the first-time male voters the party received 13%.[11]
On account of the election results in 2009 the party fulfils the conditions for receiveing public allowances. For 2009 it received 31,504.68€ (the same amount as it received from private contributions) which was exclusivly due to the PIRATEN state associations Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. The calculation was made based on the total receipts of the party in 2008. The possible upper limit of the public allowance matching for the party is a rate of 840,554.51€.[12]
It received 229,117 votes in the 2009 European Parliament election, which was 0.9%, but not enough (at least 5%) for a seat.[13][14][15] The number of party members has increased since then. As of March 2010[update], the party had over 12,000 members.[16]
On 30 August 2009, the PIRATEN received 1.9% in the 2009 Saxony state election. On the same day, the party also received one seat in each council in the local elections of Münster and Aachen, although candidates of the party ran for office only in some constituencies of both cities.[17]
Support for The PIRATEN differ somewhat between States. The party received 1.8% in the 2009 Schleswig-Holstein state election and 1.5% in the 2010 North Rhine-Westphalia state election (though without securing seats[18][19]), but only 0.5% in the 2009 Hesse state election and did not participate in the 2009 Brandenburg and Saarland state elections.
The party received 2.1% in the 2011 Hamburg state elections, though it was not yet enough to gain seats in the State parliament. In the Baden-Württemberg state election, 2011 the Pirate party was able to repeat this result. In the Saxony-Anhalt state election, 2011 they received 1.4% or 13,828 votes, in the Rhineland-Palatinate state election, 2011 they achieved 1.6% of the votes.
In the 2011 Berlin state election, with 8.9 % of the votes[20] the Piratenpartei managed for the first time to overcome the 5 % threshold and to win seats (numbering 15 out of 141 seats in the Abgeordnetenhaus) in a German state parliament.[21] This was quite a surprise for them, since they only had 15 candidates on the ballot. In response to their election, however, Mayor Klaus Wowereit criticized their lack of diversity, most notably the lack of women present in the party. [22]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||