Inicio Patrick BREYER

In solidarity with the people of Ukraine, Pirates support decisive sanctions to help end the illegal war by Russia on Ukraine, such as sanctions to cripple the Russian elite and block their access to the European markets.
At the same time, we need to be extra vigilant to prevent emergencies from being misused by our governments to impose unjustified restrictions on fundamental rights.
Unfortunately the resolution at hand calls to restrict Russian users from accessing international IT services. This is counter-productive because Russians rely on international communications services and online platforms i.e. to organise protests and access independent news and information. It is reckless to force them to use services controlled by Putin‘s regime instead.
The resolution also calls to implement an EU ban on Russian state-owned propaganda channels, which according to the Commission includes blocking European citizens from accessing their websites and blocking search engines from indexing them. This method of Internet censorship is applied by the Chinese and Russian regimes on their populations, but unworthy of a democratic society. The real antidote to propaganda is not clumsy censorship attempts but promoting media plurality and media literacy.
For these reasons I could not support this resolution and abstained.

. – Pirates supported the adoption of the Data Governance Act as we commend the final goal to facilitate data flows around Europe. It entails rules regarding publicly owned data, data intermediation and ‘data altruism’. It provides more legal certainty and proportionate measures for the reuse of data. Pirates consider the successfully added safeguards regarding data protection and data security to be adequate.
Nevertheless, we want to make clear our position on the gender balance issue with regards to the establishment of an expert group. Article 29 of the regulation stipulates that the Commission shall aim to achieve gender balance within that expert group. We, Pirates, insist that the most competent experts are selected. Only in case of similar qualification should criteria such as the gender decide. We understand Article 29 along these lines and thus voted in favour of the regulation.

. – The Pirates supported the adoption of the regulation on computerised system for communication in cross-border civil and criminal proceedings. The e-CODEX system forms the basis for cooperation between competent judicial authorities, legal practitioners and citizens throughout Europe. It consists of a set of software components that link national IT systems into a secure decentralised network for document and information transfer. Provisions on data protection and ensuring adequate data security measures were added during the parliamentary procedure.
However, we wish to make clear our perspective on the issue of gender balance covered in a non-binding recital. The regulation suggests that EU-LISA, the agency responsible for the operational management of the e-CODEX system, should have a Programme Management Board established, taking into account gender balance. It is important that the way to improve gender balance is non-discriminatory and based on competences, such as by giving a preference to the candidate of the less represented sex in case of two equally qualified candidates. For the Pirates, gender quotas would not be acceptable.