Sven Clement (Pirate Party): Can Government Ever Be Transparent?

Transparency is critical for holding politicians accountable and hugely challenging. We talked with Sven Clement, member of parliament and co-founder of the Pirate Party, about facing this challenge.

The Challenge of Political Growth

Since its foundation in 2009, the Pirate Party has fought for open information in Luxembourg. They’ve been gaining influence, winning twenty seats in communal elections and three in the last parliamentary elections, with 6.7% of the vote. But following those elections, internal divisions weakened the party, with one of its parliamentarians and several communal representatives leaving. According to Clement, this was an unfortunate side-effect of a well-intentioned approach. “I believe that parties need more people in the spotlight,” he explains. “So the goal was to establish a broader leadership of the party, better governance, and making sure that we represent more people.” But the end result was members who didn’t adhere to the party’s values. “If you join the party just for the opportunity to get elected, the first moment you see headwinds, you leave.”

The Challenge of Transparency

This isn’t the first time that trying to do the right thing has caused the party problems, as they previously faced a scandal around an app teaching refugees Luxembourgish. But Clement has stayed true to his ideals, suing the government to reveal details of procurement contracts. Clement believes that structural issues stand in the way of transparency, such as the lack of clarity around the definition of a political party. “We are still not addressing the core issue, which is who and what is a party,” he says, “and as long as we don't address that issue, it's very difficult to address the issue of transparency.” He’s also pushing to expose political donations. In other countries, these have to be published, so why not in Luxembourg?

“We should accelerate the work of reform, so that parliament becomes more transparent, but we are far, far away from that.”

Battling for the Budget

Clement is taking his fight to the highest profile events in politics. “The budget debates in Luxembourg are a farce,” he says. “We present the budget, have a nice speech, and then debate in total for eight hours.” Billions in funding are decided based on those few hours. “If we want to keep government accountable, parliament needs to be much stronger and needs real teeth when it comes to the budget.” He also wants to see committee meetings automatically subtitled. Some politicians object to the flaws in automatic subtitles, but Clement believes that it’s better to openly present something imperfect than provide nothing at all. He’s had some successes, such as pushing to publish parliamentary votes as open data online, but there’s still a lot to improve, and he’ll keep fighting for it.