Czech Pirate Party

Czech Republic

The Czech Pirate Party or Pirates (Czech: Česká pirátská strana, abbreviated Piráti) is a liberal political party in the Czech Republic, founded in 2009. Following the 2017 legislative election, it is the third largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, with 22 out of 200 seats. The parliamentary party sits in opposition to the ruling cabinet and party leader Ivan Bartoš serves as the chairman of the Committee on Public Administration and Regional Development. The party is represented by five Members of the Senate of the Czech Republic, the most recently elected being Adéla Šípová and David Smoljak in 2020 and Lukáš Wagenknecht in 2018. That same year, the party entered a number of municipal assemblies and formed a governing coalition in the Prague City Assembly, with Zdeněk Hřib becoming the Mayor of Prague. In the 2019 European election, the party gained three MEPs, joined the Greens–European Free Alliance parliamentary group and campaign leader Marcel Kolaja was elected one of fourteen Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament. The party holds 99 out of 675 seats in regional councils since the October 2020 elections.