Czechs Eye ‘Symbolic’ Pirate Breakthrough in Europe

One Saturday in February, Ivan Bartos pitched up in an impoverished Czech neighbourhood mainly inhabited by Roma.

Rock-star thin with shoulder-length dreadlocks tamed in a ponytail, 39-year-old Bartos is the leader of the Czech edition of the Pirate movement, the third biggest party in this landlocked Central European state.

Improving the lot of the Roma, a marginalised minority in states across Europe, will not happen overnight nor be imposed from above, but must occur "naturally", he told those who had come out to see him.

"How exactly?" one resident asked. Bartos lit a cigarette and pledged to celebrate his next birthday there, in March, with friends, music and fun. And that's exactly what he did.

It was the kind of refreshing, off-the-cuff performance that has set Bartos and his Pirate Party apart from the political crowd in the Czech Republic and made it one of the most successful of the various Pirate parties that have spawned across the continent since the first emerged in Sweden in 2006.

Originally a single-issue movement dedicated to reforming copyright and patent laws, most Pirate parties have since sought to appeal to a broader constituency, but few have been as successful as the Czechs under Bartos.

His party's showing in this month's European Parliament elections could see the Pirates multiply their number in Strasbourg, a "symbolic" success, according to some analysts, that may provide the foundation for even greater growth.

"The Pirates in Europe are the new 'cool party', a label that the European Greens used to have," said Petr Sokol, a specialist on European parliamentary systems at the conservative CEVRO Institute in the Czech capital, Prague.

"As such, they can draw the attention of younger voters...