Euro Elections and fsfe

[Max Mehl]

Hi all,

~ Vitaly Repin [2019-05-28 09:44 +0200]:
> I believe constructive work with any MEPs is possible in order to influence
> them on the FSFE agenda.
> Regardless of the political movement they belong to. Strong assiociation
> with any political movement
> (eurosceptics, liberals, social democrats etc) is a mistake in my opinion.

As Florian already wrote, that is why the FSFE does not align with any
political party or movement but stays independent. Our mission is to
foster Free Software and user freedom, not judging the European Union as
a whole.

> I would like to put this idea even further.  Why can't FSFE monitor how
> each and every MEP voted for the matters regarding free software
> dyring the current and previous election term and present this statistics
> at FSFE web site (searchable web pages +  json/xml)?

Actually, we thought about that before this year's elections but decided
against it. The simple reason was that there hasn't been any vote on a
pure Free Software topic [^1]. Free Software politics on EU level often
took place within the EU Commission (which we cannot vote for) and other
bodies apart from the parliament, or in guidelines and declarations that
don't require a vote but set important cornerstones for future
legislation. 

However, with the "Public Money? Public Code!" campaign we strive to
push the new parliament to create positive legislation, and we will
reach out to interesting MEPs soon to inform them about Free Software
and to find out how they think and act. Let's see how we can engage the
Free Software community and the general public in this activity. If you
have any ideas, please let us know!

Best,
Max


[^1]: If the Copyright Directive comes up in your mind: FS has been a
small detail in it and with an exception pro FS. How to judge that in a
way that it becomes clear how the MEPs think about FS?

-- 
Max Mehl - Programme Manager - Free Software Foundation Europe
Contact and information: https://fsfe.org/about/mehl | @mxmehl
Become a supporter of software freedom:  https://fsfe.org/join