07 Jun Swedish voters give Pirate Party European seat

The Swedish Pirate Party, which favors legislation to ease copyright restrictions, won 7.1 percent of the vote in today’s balloting for the European Parliament. This assures them of one seat in Sweden’s 18-seat delegation to The Hague, but probably fall just short of the votes needed for two seats.

It makes the Pirates Sweden’s fith largest political party, and positions them for the 2010 Swedish Parliamentary elections. If they cross the five percent threshold in that election, they will be assured of at least five percent of the seats in Parliament. They hope seats will give them political power they can exchange for legislation to reform copyright law.

Interest in the party  surged in 2006, when Swedish police raided the offices of the unrelated Pirate Bay, operators of a BitTorrent indexing website.