Excerpted from David Bollier:

“In Germany, the commons is actually a topic of mainstream political discussion. Here, too, the Green Party and particularly its associated foundation, the Heinrich Boell Foundation, have been very active. I have been working with the Boell Foundation and with the Commons Strategies Group on the commons, especially with Silke Helfrich of Jena, Germany, who has long associations with the Boell Foundation, and with Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation. Together we created the Commons Strategies Group to act as international advisers and strategic catalysts for advancing the commons paradigm. We are less of an organization than a collaborative network.

We are completing a major anthology of more than seventy essays about the commons from authors from more than two dozen countries. The book, The Life of the Commons, will be published in a few months. We are also planning a major conference on the economics of the commons for May 2013, in which we will try to explore how and why the commons works as a socio-economic-political entity, at both the macro- and micro-levels.

This conference will build on the work of the International Commons Conference held in Berlin in November 2010, which convened 200 self-identified commoners from 35 countries — Amsterdam hackers, Filipino farmers, South African squatters advocates, the Brazilian minister of digital culture, German urban gardeners, American academics and activists, and many others. The website for the conference has a host of valuable documents, videos and other materials. One sign that the commons is being taken seriously in Germany is the recent founding of a new Research Institute on Climate Change and the Global Commons.

I think it’s noteworthy that the Pirate Party is big in Germany. It won 10% of the vote in the recent Berlin regional elections. And the Pirate Party in Sweden won two seats in the European Parliament a few years ago. It is the most popular party in Sweden for voters between the ages of 18 and 30. Like Occupy, the Pirate Party also sees the existing political system as a rigged, captured system. The Pirate Party has focused mostly on Internet and copyright issues, but it is attempting to diversify its agenda and move into electoral politics. There are more than two dozen national Pirate Parties coordinated by the Pirate Party International.

There is a lot of interest in the commons in France, but sometimes the history of political action focused on government makes it hard for some French to “see” the commons as a viable alternative sector. However, advocacy about digital commons is quite strong, as seen in the group La Quadrature du Net, the work of the Charles Meyer Foundation, and advocacy by people like Philippe Aigrain, who has a new book on the sharing economy called Sharing.

I shall always remember reading a short piece by Frenchman Alain Lipietz, who gave an etymology of the word “commons.” He traces it to the Normans – not the English – and says that the word derives from the conjoining of two words that mean “gift” and “duty.” I like this short, succinct description of what a commons is. It’s poetic and profound.

In Italy, there was a major voter initiative two years ago about whether to privatize municipal water systems and other water resources in Italy. Some 94% of the electorate gave a stunning rejection of the privatization proposals. Control of water was spoken about explicitly as a commons, which has become a term of mainstream political discussion. A key advocate and scholar in Italy is Ugo Mattei, an international law professor based in Turin. Another prominent figure is Enrico Grazzini, who recently published a book on the sharing economy.

Some of the most visible leadership is coming from Naples Mayor Luigi de Magistris, who has appointed an Assessor of the Commons to monitor and improve local commons. He recently hosted a major conference on the commons for Italian municipal officials, and has instigated a move to have a voter initiative on a European Charter on the Commons. This effort aspires to collect one million signatures in order to get a voter initiative on the commons on ballots throughout Europe, with the goal of giving explicit legal protection to various commons. The precise legal terms of the Charter are currently being worked out. Just this past weekend there was a major conference in Rome devoted to the initiative.”