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To underscore the increasing political impact of the digital democracy issue, a new political party was established to run for the general election in Sweden in 2006. Piratpartiet (The Pirate Party) gained 34 918 votes. The result made them number three among the parties not qualifying for the Swedish parliament. The history of the Pirate Party actually started earlier. It is part of a Swedish movement in the field of file sharing and anti-copyright activism represented by Piratbyran and The Pirate Bay.
 
The establishment of Piratpartiet was a direct effect of the escalating and increasingly heated public debate on the immaterial rights and copyrights and a protest against a change of the Swedish copyright laws which would make the downloading of copyrighted material via the internet illegal. The party's homepage was originally started by its chairman Richard Falkvinge, as a way to get people to sign an online petition for the abolishment of the existing immaterial right laws and to protest against the new copyright laws. The interest immediately turned out to be so big that enough people signed the petition that it was possible for Falkvinge to register a political party.
 
The political aims of the Pirate Party have since then developed and matured. The core beliefs of the party are of course the reformation of copyright laws, the abolishment of the patent system and the respect for the right to privacy but the main scope of the movement is participatory democracy.
 
Following the 2009 E.U. elections where the Piratpartiet obtained 2 seats in the European parliament, the Belgian Pirate Party was created. In 2010 following the fall of the Belgian government, Pirate Party Belgium participated in the Federal elections. Despite the very shot term of notice and no means available, it obtained 2,4% of votes in the Brussels region.
 
The same year, Pirate Party Belgium also organized the first formal Pirate Parties International (PPI) convention where the PPI statutes were voted. As such Pirate Party Belgium became a founding member of the PPI.