Will be published in the relevant section, along with our other ideological documents. Posted here for publicity reasons and as a courtesy to fellow Pirates.

For a New Pirate Movement – Political, Ideological, and Programmatic Declaration of the Pirate Party of Greece

Rethymno, June 2025

We are living in extremely dark times. The hardcore far-right marches on incessantly, fueled by vast amounts of money offered to it by neo-fascist multi-billionaire oligarchs, hell-bent on undoing all political and social progress that took place since the Enlightenment. To propagandize their ideology, they have leveraged eager scribes in their corporate media, flanked by much-advertised think tanks that operate on dark money and plant their pundits in the largest universities. A further, more recent, addition to this crowd is a host of various depraved influencers, who preach hate and misanthropy. The imposition of neo-fascist rhetoric as the only acceptable frame for public speech is overseen by Gauleiter in the monopolistic social networks and each nation’s judiciary.

We are not surprised by the ideological hegemony of neo-fascism. For decades now, we have witnessed an increasingly intense campaign to turn public opinion against personal and political liberties, against human and social rights, against democracy and peace. The progressive conquests of the labor, student, feminist, anti-war, and anti-racist movements, to which we owe the few moments of peace we have experienced, are being constantly defamed and slandered.

We know the weapons of the oligarchy and its propagandists well: they oversimplify reality and obscure crucial information; they single out individuals and groups of people that the oligarchy wants to proscribe; they create an environment of social automatism, fear-mongering, and moral panic, with scarecrows such as the “woke culture” and the “social justice warriors”, from which we will be “liberated” by the New Totalitarianism. Hitler, Mussolini, McCarthy, and Goebbels would be proud of the disinformation, misinformation, and surveillance methods employed today by their successors and imitators.

The Pirate Movement Today

We have no right to mince our words: the Pirate Movement in Europe and around the world has been weighed, has been measured, and has been found wanting. Although it should be on the frontline of the fight against global regression, at best it is scandalously absent. The Boards of the European Pirate Party (PPEU) and the Pirate Parties International (PPI) have devolved themselves into mere prytanea, “elite” conclaves where the hegemonic Pirate parties of Northern Europe distribute offices and titles among their chosen, with one competence only: to prevent any meaningful intervention in the European and global political scene. They do not even touch upon topics that are in the core of pirate politics, such as transparency, the struggle against corruption, intertwining interests, state and corporate abuses, the rule of law, the protection of democracy, of the helpless and the refugees, the freedom of the Press, the right to privacy – including communications.

As proof of our statements, we are listing seven striking cases from Greece, which are within the core of Pirate politics, have featured prominently in the news in Europe and internationally, and have been discussed in the European Parliament. Yet, in all of those cases, the PPEU, the PPI, and all other Pirate parties in Europe remained absolutely indifferent and silent:

1. Backslide in Press freedom in Greece (Petsas List, SLAPPs) and murder of Giorgos Karaivaz: there was no initiative or intervention; no official or member of the PPEU or the PPI bothered to contact us for information, although it is absolutely impossible for PPEU MEPs to have been unaware of what had transpired.

2. Qatargate scandal and Greek politicians’ involvement: likewise.

3. Novartis scandal cover-up: likewise.

4. Siemens scandal cover-up: likewise.

5. Predatorgate spyware scandal: likewise.

6. State-sponsored murder of approximately six hundred migrants and refugees off the shores of Pylos: likewise.

7. Criminal government actions concerning the Tempi railway crash: likewise.

These are not mere internal matters like a hospital’s management initiating vengeful disciplinary action against a worker. These events became known throughout the world and are absolutely impossible to have evaded the attention of any politician. Yet, in all of these seven cases, the PPEU and the PPI proved to be absolutely non-existent, and the same applies to their member parties. No member of the PPEU or the PPI’s Boards, no Pirate MEP, no official of any Pirate party – European or not – cared to contact us or, as we have it on very good authority, any journalist or civil society member, even merely to be informed. The deafening silence of the PPEU, the PPI, and their member parties showed us we can no longer expect any actual political action or solidarity.

We received further confirmation in recent meetings of the Council of the PPEU. The agenda was restricted to strictly procedural matters, mainly distribution of offices. Any subject that could lead to political added value was excluded with risible excuses.

Still, we did not give up: our delegation was the only one that filed motions on crucial political issues, like the official adoption of a humanitarian stance towards the people driven to emigration by climate crisis; the battle against the rise of the far-right in Europe; the role of NATO and the USA in wars that cause thousands of deaths throughout the planet; the genocide against the Palestinians. Unfortunately, our efforts proved fruitless. In all cases, the Board violated all accepted practices and all regulations in order to prevent the discussion of these issues. So, the PPEU remained, yet again, shamefully silent. Especially w.r.t. the ongoing genocide in Gaza, it chose complicity. This stance and these machinations constitute a betrayal of the Pirate Ideology itself and the principles and history of the Pirate Movement.

We must remind that, from the very first moment, the Pirate Movement, identifying itself with the Occupy Movement, supported and promoted the extension of human and civil rights in cyberspace, the fight against economic and social inequality, as well as the strengthening of government transparency and accountability.

The Pirate Movement promised to always keep at the center of its programme the protection of human rights, freedom of speech and creation for all, government transparency and accountability, citizens’ open access to knowledge and culture, and citizens’ participation in the decision-making process. So, with this ideological background and this political and social heritage, there is no excuse for what has transpired in recent years.

The Seven Plagues of the Pirate Movement

We have already explained at great depth in statements of our Governing Board the history of the political and moral downfall of the Pirate Movement. Sadly, from its very first moments, the movement found itself shackled by seven basic malaises and hangups that deprived it of the ability to develop a comprehensive, intersectional, and ideologically consistent political action:

a) the insistence on being a single-issue movement;

b) the avoidance of having a clear position on political issues beyond Informatics and Technology;

c) the “flexibility” of the neo-LePenist doctrine “neither left nor right”;

d) the lack of a meaningful moral and political compass;

e) untransparent and unaccountable leaderships that often sidestep and blindside their candidates;

f) the complete lack of cooperation and coordination among national Pirate parties;

g) the complete lack of cooperation and coordination of the PPEU’s European Parliament members with the national Pirate parties.

There has never been any real intention to tackle these plagues, and the movement is now suffering the consequences.

By maintaining a single-issue character and opting to stay out of topics outside Informatics and Technology, national Pirate parties and, by extension, the Pirate Movement itself have remained incapable of presenting a complete, well-documented political programme on important issues that directly affect people’s everyday life.

Without a moral and political compass, the movement became captive of unscrupulous, unprincipled, small-time “leaders”. These figures, exploiting the “flexibility” provided by the neo-LePenist “neither left, nor right” doctrine and the inexplicable tolerance extended to unaccountable and untransparent leaderships that diligently conceal their actual economic and political affiliations and dependences, as well as the interests they really serve, have turned the movement into a handmaid of the international far right.

Lastly, the lack of cooperation and coordination, both among national Pirate parties and among MEPs and national Pirate parties, means that the Pirate Movement has not been able, for many years now, to have a unified voice on any issue, and remains unable to express the concerns and worries of its members in the European Parliament.

These seven plagues have led, as early as 2013, to many well-publicized resignations of important and reputable Pirates – Andrew Norton, Martin Delius, Felix Reda, Florie Marie, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Mikuláš Peksaet al. There is a plethora of political articles, statements, interviews, and statements that have documented in great detail the issues that have led to these high-profile resignations. Sadly, the powers that have dictated the movement’s direction for the past fifteen years have chosen to utterly disregard the good-faith, even if sometimes pointed, critique that has been directed at them all these years – that is, the years when criticizing party leadership was still allowed, because nowadays the PPEU, blatantly violating Pirate principles, seeks to prohibit it by weaponizing its Code of Conduct Committee in a most obscene manner, evoking memories of authoritarian parties and regimes.

The Need for An Independent and Radical Pirate Movement

In these times, personal and civil liberties are eroded more and more every day. We are witnessing a criminalization of political speech, solidarity, and defence of human rights. Science is being censored. Press freedom is at grave risk. One after the other, states adopt methods taken from George Orwell’s “1984” to control their citizens – and have the temerity to call this “democracy”, “security” and “freedom”. The Fascist International has absolutely vulgarized public discourse and has managed to drown every normal, humanitarian, pro-peace voice in a cesspool of racist hatred, obscene sexism, religious fanaticism, jingoism, and conspiracy theories.

At the same time, the financial lysenkoism known as “neoliberalism” or “neoclassical liberalism” dismantles our societies. Drawing lessons from the social automatism of Ayn Rand’s misanthropic “philosophy” and the propaganda and manipulation techniques of the Third Reich, it has stripped our societies of their reflexes of solidarity and empathy, so that, by undoing the social fabric, it can facilitate the billionaire class in its looting of working people’s meagre wealth. They have rebranded corporate impunity as “competitiveness”; unsanitary and unsafe work under inhumane conditions with no labour rights and no guarantee of a decent wage, as “freedom”. They have pillaged insurance and pension funds and the savings of the actually working people so that a handful of privileged heirs will continue living in the most decadent of luxuries. They have created entire armies of unemployed, semi-employed, working poor, and homeless people. They have ruined entire countries and sunk their peoples into destitution. They have gutted democracies and installed bloodstained, fascist juntas.

In this toxic environment, the true, unadulterated, free voice of the Pirates is needed more than ever. But with the Pirate Movement tethered to hegemonic parties that have abandoned its humanitarian, pacifist, democratic principles and have embraced positions of the international right wing and far right, this voice is not going to be heard. For Pirate values to be expressed, for Pirates to be able to fight again for personal, civil, and social liberties, for human rights, peace, democracy, government transparency and accountability, a fresh start is needed; a new political space, open, dynamic, independent and unmediated.

For these reasons, we Greek Pirates proceed with the independence of our party and its disengagement from bodies that are now delegitimized and morally, ideologically, and politically bankrupt. Free from these shackles, we propose the re-establishment of the Pirate Movement through the creation of a new political formation that will restate the principles of the Pirate Movement and express them with consistency, honesty, and clarity, with no margin left for misinterpretations. This new entity will not be yet another closed, untransparent conclave or a structure that will distribute offices and titles to a cadre of “friends”. Instead, it will be an open and self-organized network of democratic and progressive individuals and collectives, who adopt and embrace the principles of the Pirate Movement and wish to participate actively in the formulation of its agenda and policies, independently, without “middlemen”, camarillas, intrigues, or nods to the reactionary forces. The New Pirate Movement will build its action and its political intervention on the following axes:

Axes of Political Mobilization for the New Pirate Movement

1. Human-Civil-Social Rights

1. Human, civil, and social rights are absolutely non-negotiable and cannot be subject to demagogic “opinion polls” and “plebiscites”, nor are they “privileges” that any sovereign “grants” as a gesture of “good will” to citizens who exhibit “good conduct” or fit into the authorities’ mould. We demand full respect for these rights, for all, regardless of race, religion, origin, gender identity/expression, political affiliation or physical and mental ability. To this end, we demand stronger provisions in the Constitution.

2. Strictly secular state: Full and absolute separation of state and religion. No religious authority can be allowed to impose its interests and will upon the citizens.

3. Zero tolerance to backslides in the freedom of expression, critique, exchange of ideas, knowledge and information; in the rights of assembly, association, protest, civil and labour/trade union action.

4. Reform of defamation law and strict prohibition of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), whose sole aim is to censor, blackmail, and intimidate; strict prohibition of the abuse of copyright law for the exercise of censorship.

4.a. We demand meaningful measures against the formation and proliferation of cartels in the Press and any other sector.

4.b. Special care will be taken to examine the role of the Greek National Council for Radio and Television (NCRTV), which will be appropriately reformed to serve the needs of an actual democracy and not the censorious demands of the governing party.

5. In compliance with art. 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we recognize health, food, and shelter as inalienable human rights. Therefore, we promote financial policies that defend these rights. Also, we clearly and unequivocally stand against stock exchange gambling on these basic goods, as well as the weaponization of their deprivation, especially by military and paramilitary forces against civilians.

6. We demand the adoption of a very concrete, strict, and clear definition of the crime of terrorism. This definition will not be subject to expansive interpretation for the exercise of censorship, suppression of dissent, restriction of liberties, or the defamation of democratic movements and bodies.

7. The definition of “national security” must be especially strict and narrow. Invocation of “national security” for the undertaking of any restrictive action by the state must fulfill exceptionally strict terms of justification, without ever reducing or denying citizens’ rights to justice.

2. Strengthening of Democracy and the Rule of Law – Improvement of Public Administration

1. Abolition of the Prime Minister-centric model of government once and for all.

2. The simple proportional representation will be enshrined in the Constitution as the only electoral system. The state and the government, local or national, must never be the bounty of any party.

3. Civil servants swear to uphold and obey the Constitution and to protect the democracy. Participation in neo-fascist, neo-nazi, pro-dictatorship groups is incompatible with their capacity and oath. So, we promote the removal of all members and supporters of such groups from the public administration, the judiciary, and uniformed services.

4. Strengthen the independence and competence of independent authorities, through targeted legislative measures and constitutional amendments, an increased budget, and proper staffing. Without checks and balances to curtail executive and corporate arbitrariness, democracy cannot function.

5. Robust and consistent fight against the cartels that create an environment of corruption, which degrades not only the healthy functioning of the economy and the markets, but also the rule of law and democracy. Special emphasis will be given to the cartels in the Press and their action.

6. The staffing, funding, and role of the Parliament’s Scientific Service will be strengthened: draft legislation that is incompatible with the Constitution, the international treaties, conventions, and declarations on human rights that our country has signed and ratified, as well as the country’s European acquis, will not be permitted to be brought to the Parliament or to be issued as executive orders.

7. Full, consistent, and without exceptions, application of good law-making principles.

8. Public deliberation in the legislative drafting procedure will be strengthened, without untransparent “fast track” procedures, without deviously short deliberation deadlines and – of course – without bypassing the deliberation.

9. A Constitutional Court will be established, with the competence and power to annul laws that are incompatible with the Constitution, the international treaties, conventions, and declarations on human rights that our country has signed and ratified, as well as the country’s European acquis.

10. The prohibition of introduction of “hidden” amendments in unrelated draft bills, especially at the last minute, will be strictly enforced.

11. Evidence-based policy making and legislation, on the basis of actual, well-documented data.

12. Drastic restriction of the misconstrued “discretion of the administration”, which is often abused and leads to unjust and discriminatory treatment of citizens and civil servants.

13. Drastic restriction of the money earmarked for “secret funds”.

14. Transparency of government officials: the asset/property declaration is an inadequate tool. We demand transparency w.r.t. how and where government and public administration officials, politicians, even officials of our own movement. Also, we demand transparency w.r.t. their relations with corporate and other vested interests.

15. Ministers, deputy/alternate ministers, parliamentarians, secretary generals and director generals of ministries, elected official of local government will be obliged to adhere to full transparency rules regarding their meetings with lobbyists.

11. Non-partisan Justice: the judiciary must stop being each government’s bounty and chattel.

12. Especially regarding the judiciary:

12.a. We need a meaningful Code of Ethics and Conduct.

12.b. Actual transparency regarding judges’ wealth and its sources and manner of acquisition.

12.c. Actual control and meaningful controls and mechanisms to prevent and handle instances of Conflict of Interest and similar conditions that undermine trust in the judiciary.

12.d. Removal of judges associated with neo-fascist and neo-nazi groups, as well as judges who are found to collude with religious extremist groups.

12.e. Mistrial, denial of justice, deliberate postponements of trials relating to corruption and arbitrary government action in order to invoke the statute of limitations and let corrupt officials remain unpunished, will have serious consequences for those involved, especially in case these actions lead to sentencing of the country in the European and international Courts of Justice.

13. Fight against Collusion and Corruption:

13.a. Separation of state and corporate interest, especially w.r.t. revolving doors.

13.b. Strict and meaningful handling of the issue of hiring relatives of politicians in news outlets, social networking companies, the government, corporations that take contracts with the state, as well as offshore companies.

14. Decentralization: the role and competences of local government will be enhanced through appropriate legislation and the assignment of funds, equipment, and personnel to meet its operational needs.

15. The middle ranks of public administration will be empowered, with meaningful competences that will be accompanied by dignified salaries and the legal protection needed for civil servants to perform their duties without fearing frivolous, vengeful prosecution and persecution by private or political interests.

16. No abolition of permanent posts for civil servants. Dismissal will never be a tool for retaliation against union action or opposition to illegal practices; neither will it be a means to replace non-partisan personnel with party favourites.

17. The Code for Public Employees will be reformed by irreversibly removing provisions that allow management to single out employees for their personal lives and their social and political action.

18. Public sector employee evaluation, which is already in place, will be reformed to be actually meaningful, transparent, and fair. Its aim will be to improve the functioning of the public sector through the empowerment and better allocation of personnel. It will not be a tool for favouritism or proscriptions.

19. The National School of Public Administration and Local Government, and the National Centre of Public Administration and Local Government will enjoy an elevated status, through a stronger syllabus, a non-partisan leadership, and actual utilization of graduates.

20. Direct and participatory democracy: Decisions will be made through open, equitable, inclusive, participatory procedures, to give all stakeholders a voice.

21. Transparency in decision-making processes: we demand open and free access to government and corporate decisions that influence public life.

22. Accountability: officials of the government, the public administration officials, the judiciary, as well as our movement, assume responsibility for their actions and answer to the citizens or, in the case of the movement, to the members. In case actions and inaction of judges, politicians or other public officials have led to the country’s conviction by European and international courts, those responsible will personally contribute to the cost of the fines and will face disciplinary action.

23. Promotion of digital sovereignty through the replacement of closed, proprietary file and data standards with open standards and the adoption of Free/Open Source Software in the public sector.

24. Abolition of the “qualified” and unconditional immunity and impunity enjoyed by uniformed personnel when they violate the laws and/or the rights of those they come in contact with.

25. Demilitarization of the Police. Weapons that are prohibited to be used on armed personnel in combat will no longer be allowed to be used on civilians.

26. Democratic, transparent, honest, truthful public news channels. Public media outlets will no longer be allowed to be treated as partisan fiefs. We promote the institutional strengthening of competent independent authorities for the meaningful control of the quality, completeness, and equity of information, and we will create a safety net to enable journalists work independently, within the Code of Ethics, without being blackmailed or coerced.

3. Economic/Financial, Social, Gender, and Environmental Justice – Protection of Social Goods

1. Economic/Financial Justice:

1.a. Progressive taxation and re-establishment of a meaningful tax-free threshold for people of lower income.

1.b. Abolition of the unjust and ineffective presumption of sufficient means of subsistence.

1.c. Taxation of extreme wealth, excess corporate profits, and luxury goods (vessels above twenty meters in length, luxury vehicles, private aircraft – fixed and rotary wing).

1.d. Re-examination of tax cuts for the shipping class.

1.e. Persons of lower income will no longer be excluded from the banking system and the issuance of loans.

1.f. Protection of the right to use cash.

1.g. Taxation of stock exchange transactions (Tobin Tax).

1.h. Abolition of the “Hercules” database and formation of a public body for the management of non-performing and inadequately-performing loans.

1.i. Development of a public, secure, decentralized system of digital transaction and lending, which will relieve citizens of the need to seek the services of the banking cartel.

1.j. A public Agricultural and Development Bank will be set up to provide liquidity to farmers and businesses, with special care being afforded to small businesses, newly-founded (“start-up”) businesses, and businesses that need an injection of liquidity in order to grow and avoid stagnation.

1.k. Ethical, honest, responsible, and accountable management of insurance and pension funds, as well as public assets, with bodies like the “Superfund” and the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (IAPR) becoming subject to rules demanding and promoting accountability, transparency, and the production of actual benefit to the society.

2. We promote the adoption of Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) to provide a decent living standard for all, as well as a “safety net” that will enable people to undertake business risk, invest in scientific and artistic endeavours, engage in volunteerism, and develop their free time activities.

3. Justice and equity in social structures: We strive for adequate, fair, and equitable social structures, that will protect human rights and provide a social safety network and aid to our fellow people who are in need (homeless, long-term unemployed, chronically ill, single-parent families, persons with disabilities, refugees, persons facing exclusion).

4. Free access to basic social goods like education, health, energy, communications, water and sewage: we demand access to good-quality, democratic, and equitable education; good-quality and free healthcare; affordable and good-quality energy supply; stable and secure, broadband communications; clean water and reliable sewage infrastructure.

5. Reduction of the cost of living through an actual curtailing of the various cartels: To achieve this, we demand the strengthening of the competent independent authorities, the disengagement from the “Power Exchange”, actual pricing transparency, and a strict framework of penalties for corporation, with fines being tied to the offenders’ annual turnover.

6. War against price-gouging and the denial of the right to housing:

6.a. Abolition of the “golden visa”.

6.b. Expropriation of properties that were acquired by “investors” and have remained outside the housing market for price-gouging purposes or are being rented for a price much higher than what was previously paid.

6.c. Strict prohibition, under severe penalties, of rental price-gouging.

6.d. Re-establishment of the Organization for Social Housing that was dismantled by the Troika. This time, it will be a strengthened form of its predecessor, in competences and funds, to provide, for a nominal monthly fee, decent, environmentally-friendly housing.

6.e. Combating the immunity and impunity in the housing market, through rental price controls and the establishment of competent services that will certify the suitability of dwellings.

6.f. Protection of people’s main residence from any auction and annulment of all evictions that resulted from foreclosures of main residences.

7. Decent working and living conditions: We promote labour justice, social security, and workplace safety, by strengthening the Labour Inspectorate and the relevant legal framework.

8. Defend labour rights: We firmly oppose any policy that compromises workers’ rights, with special emphasis given to their union action rights: the right to unionize, the right to strike, the right to collective bargaining. We demand collective contracts everywhere, with decent, living wages.

9. Relentless fight against racial, gender-based, etc. discrimination in the workplace, the housing market, education, public administration, and everywhere else.

10. We promote the protection of women, single-parent and otherwise vulnerable families, and LGBTQI+ persons:

10.a. Full recognition and protection of reproductive rights.

10.b. Prohibition of all kinds of gender-based discrimination in the workplace, in pay, and elsewhere.

10.c. Strengthening of the labour rights of pregnant persons and mothers, both in the private and public sector, without exemptions and “special restrictions.”

10.d. Protection against harassment, especially sexual.

10.e. Legal definition of rape on the basis of the lack of consent.

10.f. Legal recognition of the crime of femicide.

10.g. Irrevocable abolition of Tsiaras’ legal abomination of “obligatory joint custody of children”.

10.h. Prohibition of the use of the pseudoscientific “Parental Alienation Syndrome” as an argument in trials, especially w.r.t. custody of children in a divorce trial.

10.i. Actual and full prohibition of the sadistic, pseudoscientific “conversion therapies” that are nothing but torture against LGBTQI+ persons.

10.j. Full equality in the rights to marriage and family, regardless of gender identity/expression.

10.k. Properly funded, staffed, and equipped social services to provide aid and support – financial, social, and psychological – to vulnerable (single-parent, multi-child, low-income, at risk of or facing exclusion) families, to prevent and treat instances of neglect and abuse.

11. Actual accessibility in public buildings through properly designed and implemented interventions, taking into account the real needs of people with disabilities – no more vestigial and ineffectual measures.

12. Environmental justice: we recognize climate crisis as a political issue that affects, first and foremost, the more vulnerable members of our society. We propose efficient solutions to avert, prevent, and mitigate environmental destruction, that will be accessible to all, without geographic, economic or other restrictions.

13. We support and adopt initiatives to develop environmentally-friendly peer-to-peer energy networks to cover the needs of local communities.

14. We demand strict and effective protection of the country’s forests and its natural wealth, which can be leveraged to create jobs and revive declining communities.

15. We demand the drafting of proper urban plans that will cater to the housing needs of the population, the protection of the natural surroundings (urban and peri-urban), and will also provide functional escape routes for emergencies.

16. We demand that “orphan” land parcels and houses be provided to the landless, the homeless, the refugees and migrants so that, along with appropriate strengthening of infrastructure and local services, villages and small towns at risk of abandonment will be revived demographically and economically.

17. We support the development of safe, reliable, well-maintained, affordable and high-quality public railways, to reduce the need to use cars for intercity and local routes.

4. Free and Equitable Access to Education for All

1. Equitable access to public, free education is an inalienable right that the state must provide. without discrimination or prejudice, to all.

2. Drastic increase in spending for education: our target is to increase spending to 5% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

3. We promote the creation of local, easily accessible school buildings throughout Greece and proper maintenance and upgrades for existing ones.

4. No school or university will go without adequate staffing and equipment. Immediate hiring of teaching personnel with permanent contracts.

5. Care is to be taken for adequate, healthy, and high-quality school meals for all children.

6. Strict enforcement of policies against racial, gender-based, income-based, etc. discrimination in schools.

7. We demand well-stocked, staffed, and managed school libraries.

8. Re-establishment of the public school textbook publishing house: educational textbooks must be provided free, without the drafting, publishing and printing costs being passed on to families.

9. EU funds must be leveraged to relieve families, and especially lower-income ones, from the cost of purchasing computers that are required by the school syllabus.

10. Full protection of labour rights, as well as personal, social, and civil liberties of teaching personnel, in public and private schools alike.

11. The school syllabus and the teaching community will be disengaged from nationalist and religious fundamentalist groups. Nationalist and religious propaganda has no place in education. Education must instill humanitarian and democratic values.

12. Evolution will be introduced at all educational levels, from Elementary School to High School, and shall be taught in manners appropriate to pupils’ and students’ age.

13. Introduction of age-appropriate sex education in schools.

14. The religious indoctrination class will be removed from the syllabus and will be replaced by a class that will explain the world’s religions to children in an impartial, honest, non-prejudiced, and inclusive manner.

15. Expansion of obligatory education to twelve (12) years.

16. Repeal of the anti-democratic and anti-paedagogic legislative monstrosities passed by Marietta Yiannakou, Anna Diamantopoulou, Niki Kerameus, and Kyriakos Pierrakakis. The penal populism and social automatism they brought into our education system, which reduces students into foreign matter in their schools and universities will be uprooted once and for all, never to be reintroduced.

17. Abolition of the Minimum Admission Grade in the General Admissions Examinations and the Subject Bank. Additionally, students will no longer be expelled for surpassing the prescribed duration of studies.

18. The Academic Asylum will be re-established and enshrined in the Constitution.

19. Abolition of tuition fees for postgraduate and doctoral studies for permanent residents of Greece.

20. Special care will be taken to provide decent housing for as many students as possible, undergraduate and postgraduate, through:

20.a. Special programmes of the Organization for Social Housing.

20.b. Expansion, maintenance, and renovation of existing student housing units.

20.c. Control of rents and rental contracts, e.g. by prohibiting landlords from demanding the tenant leave the apartment during the summer because the landlord wants to profiteer through short-term rental during the tourist period.

21. Strengthening and expansion of scholarships and financial support programmes for students in need.

22. All university campuses and off-campus facilities will be serviced by public transport with frequent, low-fare routes.

23. Re-establishment of meaningful discounted tickets for students on all modes of intercity transport (coach, rail, ferries, airlines).

24. Encourage, enable, and bolster the social, artistic, political activities of the student community. To achieve this, we promote the non-partisan collaboration of university administrations and student groups for the functioning of self-managed spaces. Especially for artistic groups, their funding will not be used as a weapon for political and other censorship by the university’s administration.

25. University libraries will be supported with significantly increased funding, they will be properly staffed, and they will be opened to the society.

27. University Management Boards will be abolished. Students will be represented again in their universities’ decision-making and administration bodies, and will also have say in the election of university officials.

28. The corrupt partisan system of favouritism and nepotism within universities will be dismantled, with very harsh punishments for all involved, regardless of how high up the hierarchy they may be.

29. High School will no longer be the antechamber for the General Admissions Exams.

30. Serious measures will be taken to tackle the problem of shadow education.

31. Post-High School technical education will be significantly enhanced, to provide High School graduates with a dignified and adequate alternative, that will not exclude them from accessing university education in the future.

32. Facilitate access to university education for all, either through an appropriate examination system or through appropriately designed seminars.

5. Digital, Intellectual, and Communication Rights

1. Open Knowledge and Digital Rights: We defend an open internet, the protection of privacy, and open access to knowledge.

2. Net neutrality: We defend equitable access to broadband communications, without financial, geographical, or other exclusions. Communication must be free, safe/secure, of high quality, reliable, dependable, and affordable.

3. Protection of private data and privacy: We defend the right to privacy, reject the degradation-undermining of encrypted communications, and resist the indiscriminate, pre-emptive surveillance that violates even the presumption of innocence.

4. Prohibition of social, racial, gender-based, religious etc. profiling by state authorities and private corporations.

5. Reformation of intellectual property legislation, in order to:

5.a. Clearly define and protect the right of fair use of intellectual works, respecting the initial creators, and the right to create new works based on pre-existing intellectual and creative heritage.

5.b. Empower independent creators.

5.c. Strengthen the public’s rights to cultural and intellectual heritage.

5.d. Provide a legal shield to non-profit libraries, digital and physical.

5.e. Prohibit the weaponization of intellectual property for censorship.

5.f. Prohibit the weaponization of patents for the perpetration of blackmail through litigation (patent trolling).

6. Promotion of open standards to remove financial obstacles and monopolistic distortions from digital transition: We support open licenses, open standards, and the usage of open standards and Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) in public administration. This way, we achieve digital sovereignty, protect our country from abusive practices and pursuits by monopolistic and oligopolistic suppliers, and we enable the creation of a domestic ecosystem that develops and supports digital technologies and infrastructures.

6. A New Economic Model

1. We reject the tourism monoculture doctrine. It has brought extremely heavy environmental destruction in numerous areas of our country, a degradation of the locals’ quality of life, a housing crisis that Greece had never experienced before, and led to lawlessness, with corruption-plagued authorities “looking the other way” while “businesses” violate every law imaginable.

2. We reject the neoliberal model that threw us between the Scylla and the Charybdis of the bulimic “growth über alles” capitalism and casino capitalism. All this “journey” offers is the promotion of corruption and vileness, a looting of the planet and a transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the oligarchs. Instead, we turn to the real economy and to financial stability.

3. We reject the doctrine of de-industrialization and steering the economy to financial services. We saw the results in the Athens Stock Exchange crash under the Simitis government. The country still has not recovered.

4. The primary sector has been neglected in favour of a delusional “growth” doctrine that lionizes financial services, overtourism, and the establishment of pharaonic industrial renewables installations in pristine forests and NATURA2000 areas, as well as fertile, valuable farmlands. This has created a mixture that, in the long run, undermines the economy and the country’s survival: the destruction of the natural environment, the promotion and prevalence of precarious, unsafe, poorly-paid, dead-end work, the massive increase in corruption and crime – from all manner of mafias all the way to white-collar crime and triangular transactions – and the destruction of food and housing security and social cohesion itself. In a world that is set to find itself in the middle of terrible geopolitical upheaval, the consequences for Greece will be disastrous.

5. We support long-term viable growth, that will respect and protect the environment, in the primary and secondary sectors. The creation of added value cannot endanger future generations.

6. We support the expansion of cooperative businesses.

7. In the agricultural and livestock sectors, we listen to the needs of the producers and support the creation of reliable cooperatives for the coordination of cultivation strategies and the distribution of goods, with strict control of middlemen’s action.

8. In the secondary sector, we support its rehabilitation, which must be viable, net-zero, and respect labour rights. It will be based on the recognition of gaps in the market and the combination of quality, reliability, and innovation.

9. In this effort, the role of the country’s research and scientific personnel will be crucial.

10. We leverage the knowledge that will be freed by the reformation of copyright law.

11. We demand and work towards the creation of a framework for lawful, healthy competition with a level playing field, not a cartel-infested swamp.

12. Taxation will be fair and progressive, as the Constitution provides. No more provocative tax cuts for oligarchs and the super-rich; instead, incentives will be given to those who are actually productive.

13. We promote tax stability, which will create a stable and predictable environment, in which businesses will be able to make and carry out their mid- and long-term plans.

14. We promote the creation of necessary, adequate, and appropriate infrastructure to support business and trade: transport, communications, energy, water, waste water treatment, access to affordable and accessible business buildings and offices.

7. Active, Practical Opposition to Nationalism, Imperialism, and Militarism

1. Internationalism and Solidarity: We support and promote solidarity to oppressed and vulnerable groups, especially in our multi-crisis era.

2. Opposition to imperialist and colonialist ideas and practices: We are against all policies of military and economic exploitation of any people by powerful players that lead to their impoverishment and serfdom.

3. We refuse any participation in, or support to, any coup and military intervention against other peoples.

4. We uphold our obligations under International Law w.r.t. providing aid to refugees and those at risk of shipwreck or trying to survive a shipwreck.

5. We stand against the criminalization of solidarity to our oppressed and persecuted fellow humans. We reject the racist ideal of “Fortress Europe”.

7. We reject the far-right, neo-fascist revision of the definition of refugees that is promoted by right-wing parties.

8. We demand safe, protected routes for refugees and people forced to emigrate due to war, discrimination, poverty, and climate catastrophe.

9. Anti-fascism / Anti-Nazism: We fight against the rise of the far right, authoritarianism, and discrimination of all kinds.

10. We reject militarism and the economic blood and the economic bleeding of the peoples in the name of the vulgar “butter or cannons” pseudo-dilemma.

11. We reject and refuse any cooperation with parties that adopt, regardless of pretext and excuse, the rhetoric of fascism and Nazism.

12. We demand that very harsh sanctions be imposed on Apartheid regimes and states that do not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and undermine their functioning.

13. We promote, with all our strength, Europe’s disengagement from NATO: first of all, its character has never been defensive; second, it is completely unreliable as a force that allegedly protects its member states and enables the resolution of disputes among them. Finally, it has proven that, as an institution, it is completely unsuitable for achieving, promoting, and maintaining peace anywhere on the planet.

14. We demand honest and sincere cooperation of Europe with the countries of the Middle East and Africa, so that, through processes that will empower their peoples, they will be able to escape poverty and insecurity.

8. The European Vision of the New Pirate Movement

The Pirate Movement was never anti-European or “Euro-sceptic”. Accordingly, we, the Pirate Party of Greece, do not wish to see the European Union’s dismantling. But we demand that it undergo a true democratic transformation:

1. Absolute transparency in the functioning of the European Commission, the legislative procedure among the co-legislators (Commission, Council, Parliament, Committee of Permanent Representatives – COREPER I and II). No stage of deliberation and negotiation on new EU laws, even at the technical level, must be kept secret.

2. Absolute transparency in the finances and spending of EU officials and their contacts with any lobby.

3. The legislative initiative must no longer be the privilege of the Commission; MEPs must be allowed to propose draft laws as well.

4. No instrument that dictates policies on member states must be “informal”, without keeping minutes in its meetings.

5. Honest and sincere approach by the EU to the Global South, free of colonialist mindset remnants.

6. We promote the economic and political unification of Europe, on the basis of solidarity among member-states, as is the case with federal states.

7. Our vision is for a Europe that will reject, like we do, militarism, corporatism, colonial/neo-colonial ideas, and imperialism, and will instead be at the centre of the struggle to rectify the causes that create, perpetuate, and exacerbate inequalities and injustices, through solidarity and the actual practice of the values it claims to hold dear.

Open Invitation

The New Pirate Movement will not function as yet another conclave, detached from the political and social reality. It will be a living, progressive, and dynamic body, that will unite the people who share our values and empower them to develop a coordinated, effective political and social action for the protection and promotion of democracy, equality, equity, inclusion, and social justice. Pirates need a space where political discourse and action will be placed front and centre, not undermined and prevented through procedural tricks and machinations and malevolent practices to sabotage dialogue.

We invite all you who share our values and feel that the current political structures do not express them to join us in this new effort. Together, we can create a New Pirate Movement, open, inclusive, radical, progressive, internationalist, and actually participatory and democratic.