Those of you who follow politics in the rest of the EU are probably aware that the Pirate Party has been making waves in Germany. The Pirates, born in Sweden but spread to other countries, are sometimes dismissed as a "party of geeks," whose main interest is in the use of the Internet as a political forum, free sharing of software, music, and film, and opposition to laws allowing the state to monitor private Internet usage. But the German Pirates have expanded their purview to become a more broad-based anti-system party and defender of civil liberties. They have been receiving 6-7% of the vote in some elections.
In France, there is also a nascent Pirate Party, but it didn't fare well in the last legislative elections, garnering under 1%, despite fairly decent press coverage. This article describes the French Pirate Party and explains why it will have a hard time matching the performance of its German counterpart.
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