Swedish Pirate Party Member To Be EU's Youngest MP

First time accepted submitter genjix writes "In a few weeks Amelia Andersdotter will be the second Pirate Party member to take a seat at the European Parliament in Brussels. The 24-year-old Swede was voted in more than two years ago, but due to bureaucratic quibbles her official appointment was delayed. TorrentFreak catches up with the soon-to-be youngest MEP to hear about her plans and expectations."

Comments

Only 24?

[smi.james.th]

24 years old is very young to be in any parliament... That's how old I am!

I wish her luck. Hopefully the concept can spread around the world, the current copyright situation is quite crazy as it stands.

Re:Only 24?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of European countries have very young MPs in national parliaments. The Minister of Taxes in Denmark is 26. The youngest MP in Denmark is 20.

Re:Only 24?

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada has younger (19!); thanks to Quebec's recent purge of the Liberals/PQ, several "no hope of being voted in at all" candidates from the NDP got in.

Naysayers say nay

[Rogerborg]

Quick precis for those who don't know: MEPs are essentially non-entities. All EU legislation is created by the Commission, made up of unelected political appointees from Member States. Since they don't know anything about the issues that they actually legislate, they farm out the task of actually writing laws to expert consultants - read, lobbyists.

After six or seven rounds of rubberstamping, the new Directive is put before the actual "Parliament", where MEPs can vote yea or nea, or just not show up in the hope that it will pass and they can plead ignorant neutrality. If they vote nea, it goes through the committee system a few more times so that some of the more deliberately egregious clauses can be elided. Honour satisfied, the Directive is duly passed in the form that the lobbyist really wanted, and Member States can begin the process of (mis)implementing it, or in the case of anyone South or East of Belgium, shrugging their shoulders and simply ignoring it.

And that's how democracy works.

Re:Naysayers say nay

[Teun]

You are an uneducated idiot or troll, may be both.

Why would the commission need be made up out of elected members when you can get better people that are not necessarily political connected? See the present Italian government.
In many European countries the democratic process means the parliament gets elected and they appoint and control the government.
In case of the EU commission it is appointed by the democratically controlled governments of the member states and since fairly recent the EU parliament can approve or even veto policies as proposed by the commission.

Of course it would be better when the EU parliament had full democratic rights like introducing their own proposals or amendments but the UK and France have always and are still opposing to such an idea.

Re:Naysayers say nay

[Hentes]

This is how in was in the past, but in the last few years the EP has managed to grab most of the power. Now the Commission is elected by them, making them the most powerful.

Re:Naysayers say nay

[Kjella]

It's not a secret that the commission has been ripe for lobbyists, particularly before the parliament got their veto right with the Lisbon treaty in 2009. But it really comes down to the EU being in a half-state between a trade alliance and a federation. Is it an alliance of nations or does it want a European parliament like Congress and a federal government, with federal law, federal taxes, and federal economic policy? Let me tell you there's a vast opposition to that, not just in the UK and France. Even though the EU is expanding to cover more and more areas, for the most part it has to work through the national governments. If there's a top level meeting on education, it's the 27 ministers of education not an EU Department of Education. Despite the talk of an EU military force, there are 27 national militaries. There are 27 ministers on foreign policy who each keep their own ties to other nations and so on. And that is also why the EU passes directives, while the 27 national assemblies passes laws.

I mean, yes they could do away with that and pretty much become the United States of Europe. One parliament that makes law directly from Brussels on their own. It'd be democratic, as the EU parliament is democratically chosen. Some say all the important things are already decided there, but there's a difference between keeping the appearance of national governance and openly admitting that the EU is running the whole show. That is why most directives have optional components, so the national governments can pretend to have a say even though all the essential parts are required. And I say this coming from Norway, a non-EU member that's passed every EU directive since 1994 and is now maybe considering veto'ing our first. And of all the crappy directives they could have picked they chose a poor one, but at this point I just want to know what happens if we don't just bend over and take it.

Savviness

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is the first time I've read an article on copyright/patent/trademark law, consisting mostly of the words of a particular politician, and thought to myself: Hey, this person knows more than I do about the subject. Like, a lot more.

Re:Savviness

[Lennie]

I thought this was also really interresting to see from a European commissioner:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/copyright-isnt-working-says-european-commission-10024835/
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/11/20/0511214/copyright-isnt-working-says-eu-technology-chief-neelie-kroes

Re:Wow - nice pirot

[migla]

Aye!

Then, in case one needs to know about male geeks being rude (maybe without wanting to, actually), read this:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_Daughter.html

That's a pretty long read, though. Maybe just watch "How to not be a Dick", by Matthew Garreth at Lugradio live 2008:

http://blip.tv/flamekebab/lrluk-2008-the-gong-a-thong-lightbulb-talk-extravaganza-matthew-garrett-1109597

Re:There are more important issues right now

[cbope]

Whether the "piracy" issue is irrelevant or not, just sitting by and letting your rights be taken away while you are distracted by a larger issue is NOT going to help us in the future. It's precisely at times like this that you need to be vigilant of things that are going on and not just the big issues.

While you were distracted, what is to stop a far-right corporate drone from passing some legislation that further restricts your rights as a citizen and gives more rights to corporations?

You might as well pretend to be an ostrich and bury your head in the sand...

Re:There are more important issues right now

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, two things:

One: When will be a good time? There's ALWAYS something "more important". If the euro crisis is resolved, then the issue will be immigration, if that's resolved it will be something else, etc. So IMO they should go ahead.

Two: From TFA, the Pirate Party has about 7% of the vote, which is hardly "grandstanding" the issue. Whether the issue is significant or not is another debate. I think it is. Perhaps not as urgent as the euro crisis, but important none the less.

The fact that she's young perhaps indicates that she shouldn't take charge, but if everything is done by the old people then once they retire / die / whatever, there'll be a big leadership gap, so it's essential that the younger generation is involved to maintain any sort of stability and continuity in the resolution of these issues.

My 2c.

be positive!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is much more important, that if she starts with 24 and is good and clever enough could be someone - if she grows up - who has a great impact on the european politic, just like the other young politicians, MEPs, MPs, PP members and so on - which I would really welcome