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."

Re:Wow - nice pirot

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice... is there any way to post an image of a woman without it getting the sexual treatment?

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.

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:Wow - nice pirot

[Hazel Bergeron]

Male geekiness is a sexual characteristic.

Male aggression is a sexual characteristic. /. exists because the male mind[tm] has certain characteristics which can be appealed to.

Another male sexual characteristic is to notice the physical features of women.

It's easy to take selective offence, especially when political correctness is so good at it. But while repressing antisocial acts may be good for society, repressing thoughts which make you uncomfortable will get you nowhere.

After all, it would be a liar who didn't notice the appearance of a politician, and a lying politician who said he did not consider his own appearance.

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 [starcitygames.com]

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 [blip.tv]

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

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/ [zdnet.co.uk]
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/11/20/0511214/copyright-isnt-working-says-eu-technology-chief-neelie-kroes [slashdot.org]

Re:There are more important issues right now

[BenevolentP]

Though the name implies it, a large part of the pirate parties program is citizen rights, including non-censorship and anti-surveillance. What they think of other topics is mostly irreleveant - in germany the stance on surveillance of the politicians of the big parties already changed siginficantly when they noticed that there is indeed a large percentage of people who care about it. The fact that they just behave that way because they are afraid to lose votes isn't really relevant.

Re:Naysayers say nay

[antientropic]

You mean the one in which the European Commission just turfed out the democratically elected Prime Minister and replaced him with a Goldman Sachs stooge? That Italian government? Following quick on the heals of rolling the leader of the Greek government (for the high crime of proposing to put the people's future to a vote by, you know, the people) and replacing him with another European central banker?

You're seriously misinformed or just trolling. The European Commission did no such thing - in fact, they have been relatively absent in the entire debt crisis. You could argue that Merkozy got rid of Papandreou and Berlusconi, but that's rather dubious as well: Papandreou did himself in by calling for a referendum (a stupid unilateral move that was rightly met with condemnation from the other EU states; should you organise a referendum when your house is on fire?) and then reversing course a few days later, while Berlusconi (finally!) lost his majority in parliament. Governments fall all the time - I don't see what's undemocratic here.

Re:Naysayers say nay

[Teun]

Mainland Europe understands the democratic process quite well, contrary to the UK it was influenced by the French revolution.

In 1748 he French philosopher Charles Montesquieu published a book called De l'esprit des lois, in it he proposes the Trias Politica or checks and balances.
Ideally his form of democratic government consists of three independent factors, the legislature (parliament), the executive (the government or administration) and the justice system.
Many western European governments follow this system and these three powers all have their own functions, ultimately controlled by the elected parliament.

This separation of power is considered a very important aspect of proper democratic government.