We believe that your life is better when you make your own choices.

We feel the government should interfere less with you and big companies should have less influence.

We want to keep our government and corporations in check by holding them accountable to society, and by providing citizens a say.

We want to enter Parliament to arrange just that.

This is a shorter, English version of our election program. It is written in clear words. This way, also non-Dutch speaking people can read what plans the Piratenpartij has. If the English text differs in essence from the Dutch text, the Dutch text prevails.

Our complete election program (in Dutch) can be found on our website: programma.piratenpartij.nl.

If you would rather read this English summary as a PDF, this can be found here.

Civil rights are the agreements we have made with each other so we all live well and safely. Piratenpartij sees that other parties protect such rights to a lesser degree. The continued erosion of our civil rights is a big problem.

An example is your right to privacy and freedom of speech. Piratenpartij cares about these rights because they relate to who you are and what you can do, without the government always deciding what you should do. Therefore, we will guarantee these rights for you. The government and companies must take this into account beforehand, and act in a responsible manner accordingly.

Piratenpartij will ensure that everyone is treated equally and that information about you, which is owned by other people, will be better protected. Besides that, for example, the police and secret services should not be allowed to survey just anyone. And that these services are properly controlled.

Piratenpartij believes that the government imposes too many rules to ordinary people, and that
the government wants to know too much about what everybody is doing. The government just has to be open in its conducts. This way, you will be better able to control your live, while we control the government. The very existence of the government is to serve us all.

Whistle blowers are people who want to show failures of the government, which is not always welcomed by that same government. We will make sure that whistle blowers are better protected, because, especially in those cases, we just need to know what the government is doing.

Democracy allows us to determine our wants and needs together, with all of us. Piratenpartij finds it important that everyone can participate and give his or her opinion. Too often, companies determine what we should do, which sometimes conflicts with what we want to do.

We want to participate and give our opinion beforehand and not afterwards such as by referendum. Therefore, we also ensure that decisions are made as much as possible in your own environment and not just distant in Europe or in The Hague.

We want parliament to increase size, which enables more people with different opinions to have a say. Everyone from age 16, should be allowed to vote, and laws need to be tested against the Constitution, which is the basis of all our rights.

It is important that everyone can gain knowledge. Therefore, Piratenpartij will make it easier to exchange information with each other. This way, we can all learn from each other and become smarter. This also applies to culture, such as music and books. There should be more room for sharing this with each other. We will change Copyright laws in such a way that they protect the creator and not the big companies.

Patents are meant to protect inventors to prevent others to just use your idea. Today, patents are mainly used to obstruct other people to create nice products. That is why we will reform the patent system.

Freedom of information and freedom of the press, provides that we will be informed about everything that is going on. Therefore, we must ensure freedom of the press, and therefore everybody is entitled to access to public media, and to reusing video and audio material created with public money.

In recent years, investments were directed to “more police on the streets.” The visibility of more cops on the street contributes to an extra sense of security. Piratenpartij is also going to invest in more criminal investigation, both online and offline, in order to increase the probability of criminals being caught.
Piratenpartij will provide more support to the police, enabling officers to do their work and spend less time on administration. It should also become easier for people to go to court when something went wrong.

The war on drugs has gone too far. Piratenpartij will ensure that drugs no longer fall under criminal law. When we regulate the making and selling of drugs, rather than prohibit, we release the police, allowing them to spend time on more important cases.
Problems ensuing the use of drugs relate to health, and not to law enforcement. The same goes for alcohol and tobacco. We also want health care to do more research into the positive effects of some drugs.

With regard to healthcare, your health and care of your own choice must be leading. Piratenpartij will therefore abolish deductible excess. We see this deductible excess as a punishment for being ill, and this should not be the case. The development of medicines must be carried out by universities, instead of by companies. If companies want to develop medicines themselves, they can collaborate with universities.
In healthcare, it is important that your data are well protected so nobody can access these without your permission. In addition, we also want a National Care Fund instead of health insurance companies who are in for the money.

Piratenpartij believes everyone has a right to education, and that this is the basis of our society. Our society is constantly changing, so you should have equal and easy access to education at a later age as well. All people must have the opportunity to grow to the level of education that they can handle.
We will ensure that teachers are mainly engaged in teaching and not occupied with administration. Also, children should be prepared better for the future, at school. For this purpose, ICT and English should be taught in primary school already.
Teaching and learning materials should be free and accessible online as much as possible. Schools should be accessible to children with disabilities. The government should give more money to universities to produce better research.

Piratenpartij wants to spend more money on public transport in order to reduce pollution by cars. More charging stations should be provided for electric cars. As more and more cars will have auto-pilot in the future, we will need fewer roads. We will therefore, only invest in new roads, if there is a real short term necessity. In addition, it should always be possible to travel anonymously, both in public transport and by car.

Fuels such as gas and oil are running out. Therefore, Piratenpartij wants to change the way we produce our energy. We will ensure that people and power companies can generate electricity more locally, for example from wind turbines and solar panels and other forms of green energy. We want to jointly store energy and be able to use it when needed.
In addition, Piratenpartij wants us to produce more food by ourselves, rather than importing it from other countries. And we support initiatives for preventing the waste of food.

Computers are ubiquitous. They have become part of our society. But with the current government, we are still lagging behind very much. To improve this, Piratenpartij proposes a Ministry of digital infrastructure (ICT).

This ministry will guide and handle major ICT projects together with other ministries. This ministry will pay close attention to protecting our private information and digital civil rights in the public sector and businesses.

It is important that a banking crisis will not happen again. Piratenpartij wants to prevent banks becoming too big, and we want to disconnect the borrowing of money and payment transactions.

In addition, Piratenpartij will provide more freedom to self-employed people and offer them better protection of their privacy rights. This gives SMEs and self-employed people more opportunities for their businesses. Everyone should be able to choose where to arrange their pension.

Piratenpartij will investigate the idea of a basic income and when successful, we want to introduce the basic income step by step. This will also serve as a replacement for your pension. For anyone who wants, affordable housing should be available. Housing associations need to realize this. Mortgage interest will only be deductible until one million of the house value and then slowly reduced.

European cooperation is important, but the European Union (EU) has major flaws. Piratenpartij therefore wants the EU to become more transparent and democratic. There has to be more public participation, and it must be clear what the EU does.

Trade agreements with other countries like TTIP, CETA and TiSA are not democratically established. Their purpose is mainly to help large companies at the expense of the ordinary citizen and the environment. We will therefore stop this immediately. Subsequently we will investigate alternatives that are really transparent. The premise of these conventions should be: fair trade for all, protection of humans, the environment, civil rights and freedom of information.

Piratenpartij will invest heavily in digital security. This can be in co-operation with the Ministry of digital infrastructure. We do not want arms where a robot makes decisions, and without human involvement. Piratenpartij wants to see a treaty by which countries commit not to develop digital weapons.

Piratenpartij will not support military missions in which we assault other countries. The sole purpose of the Ministry of Defence is for defense, therefore the defence budget does not need to be increased.

All people in the world should have equal opportunities to grow. Therefore, development should be aimed at strengthening the position of people in developing countries, rather than making them dependent on aid.

Piratenpartij wants to share knowledge and expertise with developing countries so that they themselves get the opportunity to take action.

Piratenpartij will mainly combat the reason why people flee their country. When they still have to flee, we want to protect their rights. Refugees are people in need, and therefore they deserve our help. For this reason, the situation must be clear to refugees more quickly.

Care of refugees should be taken in small-scale formats, with participation of the neighbourhood. It is our goal that refugees can take care of themselves as soon as possible.