It's worse than that. Czech pirate party also lost most of their members. The other member states also failed to gain any new ones.
As someone who ran a national party for a while, it feels like an end of an era.
The generation that started the Pirate party is getting older (in our 30s or older) and we're loosing (realistically, lost it a while back) our energy. If we had managed to establish the Pirates as an established party, then that would be fine, but we didn't (except in Czechia).
And now, even if you manage to give the Party to a new generation (as we did, before I left) the cultural moment is gone. Now it feels like people don't know or care about digital rights — even tho they affect them way more than they did 10 years ago when we were in our prime. If you'll allow me a hypothesis: everyone interested in IT got (financially) fat and lazy, and now we don't care anymore.
In the words of Douglas Adams: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
In my country the pirate party demolished itself when it spread into other political fields. A lot of idpol imported from the US took over net policy issues, freedoms and rights were completely secondary.
The whole understanding about digital freedoms and rights changed. It was like they changed their values over night and appealed towards completely different issues. Some even demanded more surveillance because "hate speech" was all the rage in this changed party. This new outlook was not only not attractive, it suddenly became quite repulsive.
While a party like the pirate party probably has difficulties to consolidate opinions in other fields than net policy, it wouldn't have been impossible. But it was done with a strange fervor around sometimes completely arbitrary and artificial issues not related to net policies.
Quite a few parties suffered from either takeovers and the "crazy people magnet". Everyone with fringe views on ... anything ... decided that the Pirates were the place to be.
Which, fine happens, the problem we had was, that the core ideology was very anti-censorship, so much so, that in the end those fringe groups dominated the discussion.
In my country it might have been the same. Although the anti-censorship positions quickly evaporated and were replaced by something completely different. Freedom of speech became a far right dog whistle to some and hate speech was all the new rage and state surveillance a must to combat unsanctioned opinions.
On the other side, you had ideologues promoting strict libertarian positions, which were also quite repellent because they were inflexible about their own belief system and their policy suggestions crude at best, completely anti-social at worst.
Overall there was no discussion on which positions the party should take on specific issues and instead it was mostly prescribed top down. I believe people just noticed that they don't share the same values as the party anymore and so they left.
I was never a member, but followed their developments for a time.
The alternative is being a single-issue party which people will only vote for when there is nothing more important on their minds. IMO it is good for a party to have a clear profile on most important issues, and digital rights fit into the overall progressive ideology. Another possible direction would probably be libertarian profile for techbros, but that would be a different party.
Except there are already other much bigger progressive parties here. Really most major parties tend to err on the progressive side these days. So they both alienated people that don't agree on their new focus whiile failing to convince the progressives to vote for them instead of the larger parties.
I think there's still people who care, I know I do and a lot of my peers in tech do too.
The problem is, I guess, that in times of multiple crisis which only seem to get worse, people worry about other things.
I am sad though that I agree, the fight for digital liberty and authority over your own data has largely been lost for the majority of people, and they don't seem to understand or care enough to change it.
The solution to "multiple crisis which only seem to get worse" is to go on the offensive, and lobby for laws that answer those questions in the way we like. Changing an established law is much different than adding a new one.
One possible solution would be that people who cares about digital rights and privacy would integrate a "true" leftist party, and advocate there for them to care about it.
That worked in France with La France Insoumise, that voted against Chat Control, and they have 9 seats now.
In my not so humble opinion, Czech Pirate Party went to shit because the saint trinity of Bartos, Michalek & Ferjencik decided that the party must look "professional", which means most competent millenials around me felt that they'd not be able to contribute to "such a competent organization" despite party lacking competent people.
Then Ferjencik spent a shitton of part money as the head of PR promoting his sister Olga in order for the party not to look so sausage-festy without disrupting the power balance instead of concentrating on mobilizing more people to come help out.
All that combined with internal populism and push to accept more and more members who were not even remotely Pirates besically turned it into a right leaning liberals with basically only the EU bunch staying true to the original idea of general populace being able to hold those in power accountable.
One of my latest acts as a member, I've moved to cancel accepting a new member who literally told us that he hopes he'd be promoted in the public company since Pirates have the Mayor, that he is against legalizing recreational drugs, insisted on sterilizing trans people "to prevent genes to spread" and wanted to keep harsh copyright around teaching materials because "those are important, right?"
And I had to fight HARD to revoke his acceptance as a member.
I checked their EP members' activity briefly prior to election, and that seemed to match their program and my expectations. Good.
But locally, it's indistinguishable from the outside from any other right wing party, anymore. I've lost trust in their transparency spiel/program, too. Their foreign minister is insufferable, and the rest are pretty much invisible. No idea why they wanted this ministry. It's the most visible ministry they have, but irrelevant to pirate program of transparency/anti-corruption. Foreign policy is set by the government as a whole anyway. Probably a ministry where they can have the least effect.
And execution by the ministry seems to be according to true old school piracy, rather than modern political one - proudly aligning with extreme anti-human rights fringe depending on context - while proclaiming care for human rights, and equal and just treatment of issues.
As someone who ran a national party for a while, it feels like an end of an era.
The generation that started the Pirate party is getting older (in our 30s or older) and we're loosing (realistically, lost it a while back) our energy. If we had managed to establish the Pirates as an established party, then that would be fine, but we didn't (except in Czechia). And now, even if you manage to give the Party to a new generation (as we did, before I left) the cultural moment is gone. Now it feels like people don't know or care about digital rights — even tho they affect them way more than they did 10 years ago when we were in our prime. If you'll allow me a hypothesis: everyone interested in IT got (financially) fat and lazy, and now we don't care anymore.
In the words of Douglas Adams: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"